Benefit Explosion!: Extended Unemployment Claims December 31

While today’s jobless claims report continued to show a steady trend down to both initial and continued unemployment claims with a nearly textbook peak shaping up, considering the federal extended claims data offers a more dire view of the state of the job market and of the economy as a whole.

Since the middle of 2008 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 4.816 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 5.34 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are well over 10 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.