The last employment report that will be released before November 4th’s Election, doesn’t hold much good news for the McCain campaign:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers slashed payrolls by 159,000 in September, the most in more than five years, a worrisome sign that the economy is hurtling toward a deep recession.
The Labor Department’s fresh snapshot, released Friday, also showed that the nation’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.1 percent as hundreds of thousands of people streamed out of the work force for any number of reasons.
The reduction in payrolls was much sharper than the 100,000 cuts economists were forecasting. They expected the jobless rate to be unchanged.
It marked the ninth straight month that the economy has lost jobs. The drop underscores fallout from a long slump in the housing market and a dangerous credit crunch that intensified last month throwing Wall Street — and the economy — into chaos.
So far this year, 760,000 jobs have disappeared.
“The economy is now sliding down the slippery slope of recession,” said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.
Politically, a report like this reinforces the public’s concerns about the economy, and the polls have made clear that that is bad news for McCain.
