Unemployment claims jump as government shutdown lingers

Today’s jobless claims report showed a notable increase to initial unemployment claims and a decline to continued jobless claims as seasonally adjusted initial claims jumped to 374K level. 

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 66,000 to 374,000 claims from 308,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 16,000 claims to 2.905 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 1.44 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 3.95 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.