Initial, continued and extended job claims see changes

Yesterday's jobless claims report showed an increase to both initial jobless claims and a decline to continued unemployment claims as seasonally adjusted initial claims climbed back above the 300K level. 

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 15,000 to 309,000 claims from 294,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 28,000 claims to 2.787 million resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.1%. 

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 1.45 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits. 

Taken together with the latest 2.51 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 3.97 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.