Jobless claims: Initial claims up, continuing claims down

Jobless claims report shows that more than 9 million Americans are getting continued unemployment benefits, down 250,000 from a week earlier.

Today’s jobless claims report showed a notable increase to initial unemployment claims and a notable decrease to continued unemployment claims as a declining trend continued to shape up for both initial and traditional continued claims.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment increased by a whopping 35,000 to 445,000 claims from last week’s revised 410,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 248,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 3.1%.

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 4.63 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 4.41 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 9.05 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.

Historically, unemployment claims both “initial” and “continued” (ongoing claims) are a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate and inevitably the overall state of the economy.

 

 

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