An initial claim is a new notice filed by a worker after separating from employment requesting a determination of eligibility for unemployment insurance; it starts (or restarts) a claimant’s entitlement and precedes any weekly continued-claim filings.
Seasonally adjusted means statisticians remove predictable, recurring seasonal patterns (holidays, weather, school schedules) from the raw weekly counts so month‑to‑month or week‑to‑week changes show underlying trends. Unadjusted figures are the raw counts; they differ because seasonal patterns can raise or lower claims in certain weeks and adjustment makes the series more comparable over time.
The insured unemployment rate equals the number of people currently claiming insured (continued) UI benefits divided by covered employment (the number of workers covered by state UI), using covered employment averaged over the first four of the last six completed quarters.
“Advance” claims are the preliminary weekly counts compiled from states’ initial reports (the state liable for payment) and released quickly; they are later revised after a second round of state reporting that reallocates claims by claimant residence and adds adjustments (e.g., workshare equivalents), so the revised counts can differ from the advance figures.
Extended Benefits (EB) is a federal–state program that provides extra weeks of UI to workers who exhaust regular state benefits during periods of high unemployment; a state is "on" EB when statutory unemployment triggers are met (for example, elevated insured‑unemployment or total unemployment measures that exceed specified thresholds), which automatically activates EB in that state.
UCFE (Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees) covers former federal civilian employees who lose federal jobs; UCX (Unemployment Compensation for Ex‑Service members) covers recently separated veterans/ex‑service members. Claimants in those categories file under the respective federal programs so benefits and eligibility are processed for federal or military separations.
ETA collects weekly UI counts and applies seasonal factors produced each year by BLS. BLS (contracted by ETA) updates seasonal‑adjustment models annually (and revises historical seasonally adjusted series when new factors are implemented); ETA then applies those factors and incorporates any revisions to the historical unadjusted data when releasing revised series.