A slow rise in continued unemployment claims masks a growing problem.
I created the above chart by comparing the monthly average of continued unemployment claims to unemployment levels.
Unemployment claims are from the department of labor while the unemployment levels are from the less accurate BLS household survey.
Nonetheless, the trends tell the story.
Continued Claims vs Unemployment Detail
Change Since January 2024
- Unemployment Level: 1.087 million
- 15+ Weeks Unemployment: 844,000
- 27+ weeks Unemployment: 554,000
- Continued Claims: 175,000
What’s Happening?
People have exhausted all of their benefits.
In addition, job hopping is in play.
- Eligibility: To qualify for unemployment benefits, individuals generally need to have been employed for a certain period and have earned a minimum amount of wages. Frequent job changes may make it harder to meet these criteria, especially if the job tenures are short.
- Employer Challenges: Employers can challenge unemployment claims, and a history of job hopping might be a factor they use to contest the claim. They may argue that the individual’s frequent job changes indicate they are not a reliable or suitable employee, potentially making it more difficult for the individual to receive benefits, says Swartz-Swidler.
- Temporary Work: Taking temporary work while receiving unemployment benefits can affect payments. Generally, if someone earns money from a temporary job, their unemployment benefits will be reduced or eliminated depending on how much they earn.
Maximum Weeks of Unemployment Insurance
Chart courtesy of Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The combination of expiring benefits and job hopping reduces eligibility for making unemployment claims.
Also the self-employed are not eligible for unemployment insurance although they have to pay into the system.
Ability for the self-employed to collect benefits would lead to fraud. However, paying for benefits that one can never collect is an outright scam.
Synopsis
The slow rise in continued unemployment claims severely understates the actual unemployment problem.
Since January 2024, continued claims benefits have only risen by 175,000 while unemployment is up by over 1 million.
The number to watch is 15+ weeks unemployment, now at 844,000. That’s a whopping 78 percent of the total rise in unemployment.
Once you lose a job, it takes an increasingly longer time to find one.
So look beyond the stable (for now) initial unemployment claims to see what’s really happening.
Related Posts
August 1, 2025: Payroll Disaster, Jobs Rise 73,000 but Massive Negative Revisions
There were 258,000 negative revisions in May and June.
August 5, 2025: Troubling Trends in Student Loans, Auto Loans, and Credit Card Late Payments
90-day late payment delinquencies are elevated and rising.
August 21, 2025: Continued Unemployment Claims Jump by 30,000 to New High Since Nov 6, 2021
The labor market is much weaker than most economists realize.
For specific details discussion of why we know this. please see QCEW Report Shows Overstatement of Jobs by the BLS is Increasing
I began working for myself way back in 1985. I have never been “unemployed”.
And yet…here in Maine, every business has Help Wanted signs in the windows, perpetually.
I’m surprised, Mish, you say the self-employed are being scammed on eligibility on unemployment insurance (UI) – even if it wasn’t the mainstay of your argument.
UI is a specific tax for a specific program – just like Social Security. Employers pay UI insurance taxes/premiums, but the self-employed are not required to pay that tax.
So the self-employed don’t get access to that program’s benefits, just like some people aren’t eligible for Social Security.
It’s not a scam; it’s a specific funding mechanism. You can always ask your Congressman to increase taxes on the self-employed even more to pay for their inclusion. But good luck with that.
I recall collecting unemployment for the first and only time in 2010 when no one was hiring. It certainly was exhausting in the extreme.
I look at how unemployment was forming a bottom when COVID hit and the gradual upturn from the post COVID bottom. Then I think if COVID had not happened, then maybe unemployment would be spiking MUCH high now and a recession would have been called.
The analogy is a controlled burn prevents a massive wildfire, or how borrowing brings demand forward, resulting in less demand in the future.
and yet: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the 100 largest low-wage corporations.
https://ips-dc.org/report-executive-excess-2025/
I still dont understand, ICE has deported 1.6 million as reported by BenW here not that long ago. And we all know “illegals” were “stealing” everyone’s jobs so there shouldn’t be 1 million unemployed now should there? If anything jobs should be up by the number of job stealing immigrants now deported?
And why aren’t those pesky rents going down with all those house/apartment stealing immigrants now gone? Is it possible property taxes, insurance and maintenance were actually driving rents higher?
Any functioning brains out there that can explain?
Not all 1.6 million who were deported were working. Plenty of them would have been kids, elderly, people collecting welfare etc. So there won’t be 1.6 million jobs created by the deportation.
As for rents falling, as a landlord, how many illegals have you rented to? Most landlords want people with valid SSN’s and who can pass a credit checks, background check, work history etc. The ones who are renting to illegals are slum lords and I doubt most Americans want to rent those places.
Oh Tim, I hope you have a squeaky clean record because even a parking ticket may get you up-rooted from your nice cushy life in Florida and off to El Salvador. I hope it doesn’t happen but if it does it’s called hubris-karma-you-reap-what-you-sow I think.
As for my rentals, I don’t know who my tenants are, I have a property management company that does all the work, they just direct deposit me cash every month.
I hope you of all people have an exit strategy.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-visas-deportations-068ad6cd5724e7248577f17592327ca4
The Trump administration said Thursday that it is reviewing more than 55 million people who have valid U.S. visas for any violations that could lead to deportation, marking a growing crackdown on foreigners who are permitted to be in the United States.
Don’t worry about me. If they ever come, I’ll just show then my Trump coin and I’ll be good to go 🙂
Your opinion here did not seem very popular, but I think you hit it on the head. Everyone that voted for and wanted these policies Trump is instituting will need to deal with the consequences (which seemed to be fairly obvious). And those consequences will likely hit directly many of those that voted for him.
Every voter should get a choice. But oftentimes, I wish they would live with that choice in silent reflection.
I do believe that some of the folks of which you speak may have been working “unofficially.” .
“Plenty of them would have been kids, elderly, people collecting welfare etc.”
And drug dealers, don’t forget them.
The majority of these ice deportations are recent. People aren’t going to accept these jobs until they exhaust all unemployment benefits and other free benefits.
China produces 4/5 million STEM grads/Y and 2 million engineers. Onshore industries will hire high school dropouts, community college grads, train them on Chat Pro command and control centers and simulators, along with Stanford and MIT engineers. The cost of education will drop dramatically. MAGA unemployed, who play video games, will acquire excellent skills fast and be hired first, before Harvard and Columbia U nerds.
It’s just a matter of picking the right career.
https://columbiabasinherald.com/news/2025/aug/16/big-bend-loads-up-new-ag-mechanics-certification/
Harvard graduates are useless for physical jobs, so yes the MAGA crew will get hired first. For that matter, apple season is starting up and I doubt the Ivy League graduates could manage to pick apples for a whole day either.
Does anyone publish the demographics of these people? Age.. education…years working… highest salary…???
We’re going down.
Blue collar workers are in the black market, for cash, while collecting unemployment checks. A few weeks before Ex date they tell their boss: hire me, or I have to go. They rotate from the black market, dbl their income, to a full employment. They know the labor laws.
Nothing motivates a job search like the bennies running out.
Agreed. Unemployment should be no more than 26 weeks and potentially half that.
The longer you are out of work, the more your skills atrophy.
Where did that $7,000,000,000,000 printed 4 – 5 years go?
to Kamala in the white house and Biden’s gang
You mean when Trump was president?
Trump saved people from starvation, small businesses and shingle mums with children who voted for Obama gang.
Simp harder… maybe the Cheeto Pedo will bow you a kiss.
To the .01%, same as always.
If NVDA drops from $4.5T to $3.5T SPX might drop to 4,500/4,300. JP will cut rates. Trump will collect tariffs and taxes. NVDA is very profitable. Investors who made soo much money might trigger a selling. NVDA produces pathways for ChatGPT. ChatGPT educate zoomers the unemployed and the elderly. AI pathways to wisdom instead Stanford and MIT for $90K/Y.
Trump is working hard to remove that pesky slavery stigma…
so everyone can work…
but no one gives him any credit.
Sad.
Hey! Slavery wasn’t all that bad, said our President.
Using the 2001 & 2008 unemployment levels at the start of each recession, it looks like the line of best fit will be in the ballpark of 8M. As government largess continues to grow, it’s reasonable to expect the unemployment threshold that triggers a recession to grow as well.
The first graph also suggests the unemployment level has risen by about a million in the last 12 months or so. If this is accurate, then an NBER declared recession this year seems a solid 50/50. Sometime in H1 2026 seems to be a little more likely. As has been the case for the last 6 months or so, the month-to-month jobs numbers are becoming increasingly important.
Inflation from Sept 2007 – Nov 2007 rose from ~ 2.8% to ~4.3%. So if we are in those final innings before the next recession, we may have a sizeable increase in inflation to absorb before the economy tips over. TACOs tariffs sound like just the ticket to move up inflation.
The Fed cut in Sept 2007. Seems like history is readying itself to be repeated.
In addition to the softening job market, we have Walmart & Target missing their numbers. This indicates a softer economy than I thought. I was hoping we would not see retail softening until October. But hope is a lousy strategy!
The tariffs will eat into margins and ultimately the consumer as things slow.
These are the first indicators of STAGFLATION. Oops I said it!
When retail Therapy fails… The stock market can’t be far behind.
Walmart & Target? Oh my god, have you seen Cracker Barrel? Stock down 7% today! The Cracker apocalypse is here! Goes hand in hand with the demographic crisis.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cracker-barrel-shares-nosedive-following-213729647.html
Ah yes, the “midas” Trump touch…
Wait, the woke CEO of CB changes their logo and it’s Trump’s fault the stock is down 7%? Where was this woke lady during the Bud Light debacle? Has she not been paying attention to the fake outrage over Sydnee Sweeny’s Great Jeans?
haven’t had a paycheck someone else signed, since the 19 hundred and eighties. total scam self employed cannot collect unemployment but must pay in. amerika is a grifter empire of debt and liars. in other words democracy works. trump is the greatest liar of all time. and a wonderful grifter.
What a crock of BS. Self-employed are self-employed, right? What’s hard to understand about that? They are their own “employer”. They pay themselves wages.
And most importantly, they are NOT required to pay Unemployment Insurance like regular employers who issue W-2s.
You’re quacking about a big nothingburger.
Self-employed individuals, including those who own a single-member LLC and pay themselves a salary through a W-2, generally are required to pay unemployment taxes on the wages paid to themselves.
Here’s why
So that would mean they get unemployment, right?
totally wrong. old sport.
Time to get back to work….