Jobless claims jump to 354,000

Jobless claims increased by 10,000 to 354,000 claims from 344,000 claims according to Thursday's jobless claims report. 

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

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 10,000 to 354,000 claims from 344,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims increased by 63,000 claims to 2.986 million resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.3%. 

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 1.72 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits. 

Taken together with the latest 2.77 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 4.50 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.