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Unemployment: Extended claims fall slightly

Unemployment claims report for this week indicated that  'initial'  unemployment claims went flat at 374,000.  while  'continued' claims declined by 5,000, resulting in an 'insured' unemployment rate of 2.6 percent.

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This chart shows the weekly number of initial and continued unemployment claims over the past decade three years. Both figures have declined steadily since peaking in 2009, though initial claims had a slight bump in recent months. Initial claims went flat this week, while continued claims dropped.

Today’s jobless claims report indicated that initial unemployment claims went flat and continued unemployment claims declined slightly while seasonally adjusted initial claims remained below the closely watched 400K level.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” went flat at 374,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 5,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.6%.

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 2.27 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 3.16 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 5.44 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.

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