Unemployment benefits: claims drop
Unemployment benefits: Initial claims fell by 9,000 from last week, while claims for continued unemployment benefits fell by 15000
This chart shows the number of intitial and continued unemployment benefits claims over the past two years. After peaking in 2009, the number of claims dropped in 2010 and 2011.
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Today’s jobless claims report showed an decline to both initial and continued unemployment claims as a slight rising trend was called into question for initial claims.
Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment declined 9,000 to 397,000 claims from last week’s revised 406,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 15,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.9%.
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 3.48 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.
Taken together with the latest 3.19 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 6.68 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.