Continued Unemployment Claims (SA)

The Labor Department reports continued claims every Thursday, one week behind that release's initial claims. The latest count matches the week before. A year earlier, in the week ending Sep 13, 2025, the count was 1.92 million, so it is 197,000 lower now.

A continued claim is filed by someone who has already filed an initial claim, to claim benefits for a week out of work. DOL says the count is of weeks claimed, not unique people, and states count a week even when it was not paid. It covers regular state programs in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. People who have used up their benefits, were never eligible or never filed are outside it, so it is not a count of the unemployed; that comes from the household survey behind the Unemployment Rate.

The headline is seasonally adjusted: DOL strips out swings that repeat every year, such as the extra claims filed every January, so one week can be set beside the week before. Each week's first figure is revised a week later, by as much as 13,000 in the releases checked from July 30 to Sept. 17, 2026, and each spring new seasonal factors rewrite past years. Here, a move of 13,000 or less is called little changed. The release gives no reason for a change: the count can drop because people found work or because their benefits ran out.

DOL says continued claims are not a leading indicator: they roughly coincide with the peak of a business cycle and lag at the trough. Initial Unemployment Claims counts the new claims filed each week. The Indeed Job Postings Index and the JOLTS Quits Rate track job postings and quits, other parts of the job market.