Continued unemployment claims fall, initial claims rise
Today’s jobless claims report showed a notable increase initial unemployment claims and a decline to continued unemployment claims as a significant declining trend continued to materialize for both initial and traditional continued claims.
Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment increased by 26,000 to 397,000 claims from last week’s revised 371,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 20,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 3.0%.
Since the middle of 2008 though, two federal government sponsored “extended” unemployment benefit programs (the “extended benefits” and “EUC 2008” from recent legislation) have been picking up claimants that have fallen off of the traditional unemployment benefits rolls.
Currently there are some 4.30 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.
Taken together with the latest 4.34 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 8.64 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.
This chart shows “initial” and “continued” claims, averaged monthly, overlaid with U.S. recessions since 2007.
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