Extended Unemployment: Initial, Continued and Extended Unemployment Claims December 22 2011

Today’s jobless claims report showed declines to initial unemployment claims and continued unemployment claims as initial claims fell to the lowest level seen since mid-2008.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment declined 4,000 to 364,000 claims from last week’s revised 368,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 79,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.8%.

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 3.50 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 3.53 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 7.04 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.