Jobless claims on the rise

Today’s jobless claims report showed a increases to both initial and continued jobless claims as seasonally adjusted initial claims remained over the 300K level. 
Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 1,000 to 308,000 claims from 307,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims increased by a notable 104,000 claims to 2.925 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 1.47 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

 
Taken together with the latest 2.46 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 3.93 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.