Jobless claims fall by 5000

Today’s jobless claims report showed a decrease to initial jobless claims and an increase to continued unemployment claims as seasonally adjusted initial claims climbed back above the 300K level. 

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims declined by 5,000 to 305,000 claims from 310,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims increased by 35,000 claims to 2.823 million resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.2%. 

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 1.34 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits. 

Taken together with the latest 2.50 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 3.85 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.