Jobless claims fall to 358000

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

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims declined by 15,000 to 358,000 claims from 373,000 claims for the prior week while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 43,000 claims to 2.859 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 1.37 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits. 

Taken together with the latest 2.47 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 3.85 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.