Jobless claims drop by 12,000

Today’s jobless claims report showed declines to both initial and continued unemployment claims as seasonally adjusted continued to trend below the closely watched 400K level.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment declined 12,000 to 367,000 claims from last week’s revised 379,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 130,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.7%.

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 3.49 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 4.06 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 7.56 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.