Jobless claims continue to fall

Initial jobless claims declined to 359,000 claims from last week’s revised 364,000 claims, while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 41,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.6 percent.

|
SoldAtTheTop
This chart shows the rates of initial and continued unemployment claims over the past 2 years. Rates have fallen steadily since peaking in 2009.

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

Seasonally adjusted “initial” declined to 359,000 claims from last week’s revised 364,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 41,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.6%.

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 3.23 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 3.81 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 7.04 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Jobless claims continue to fall
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Paper-Economy/2012/0329/Jobless-claims-continue-to-fall
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe