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Jobless claims rise. More than 5 million on unemployment rolls.

Initial jobless claims increase 16,000 to reach 357,000. Continued unemployment claims keep declining, but nearly 5.4 million Americans are still on state or federal unemployment rolls.  

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Total continued claims keep falling, despite ups and downs in the weekly data.

Today’s jobless claims report showed a notable increase to initial unemployment claims and a decline to continued unemployment claims as initial claims trended well below the closely watched 400K level. 

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 16,000 to 357,000 claims from 341,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 27,000 claims to 3.050 million resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.4%. 

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 1.90 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits. 

Taken together with the latest 3.46 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 5.36 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls. 

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