We now have the highest unemployment rate since November 1983:
The American economy shed another 663,000 jobs in March, the government reported Friday, bringing the toll of job losses during the recession to 5.1 million.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the national unemployment rate climbed to 8.5 percent from 8.1 percent in February, its highest levels in a quarter-century, as employers raced to cut their payroll costs. It was the 15th consecutive month of job losses.
The monthly losses and rise in unemployment rate lined up with economists’ expectations.
The agency also drastically revised the job losses in January to 741,000 from the earlier report of 655,000, but left February’s job loss estimate of 651,000 unchanged.
“There is no letup,” said James O’Sullivan, senior United States economist at UBS. “The trend has been truly dismal.”
And it’s likely to continue in that manner for some time.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Those numbers are just appalling yet there is another article saying that Freddie Mac and Fanny will give over $200 millions in bonuses and there bailed out. This is scandalous – this is capitalism at its worst when 40M people are uninsured. Sometimes I wonder if the Americans get what they deserve. If Obama wants to have tougher regulations to avoid these situations, he is being called a “communist”. Do they prefer to be screwed up or do they want change for the better. They should read more on socialism and then, they can decide. I think this outrageous while many Americans live in tents because they lost their houses. They really have to wake up and seek what’s good for them.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Those numbers are just appalling yet there is another article saying that Freddie Mac and Fanny will give over $200 millions in bonuses and they were bailed with Americans’ tax money. This is scandalous – this is capitalism at its worst when 40M people are uninsured. Sometimes I wonder if the Americans get what they deserve. If Obama wants to have tougher regulations to avoid these situations, he is being called a “communist”. Do they prefer to be screwed up or do they want change for the better. They should read more on socialism and then, they can decide. I think this outrageous while many Americans live in tents because they lost their houses. They really have to wake up and seek what’s good for them.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Here in port Huron michigan the gateway to free trade and the third largest border crossing we have unemployment much higher than the states 12 percent. We are a community that is auto related and depend also on the Canadians to support our retail. Yet our wages are roughly 8-12 dollars a hour much lower than Metro Detroit.
Every hours trains come through our tunnels and trucks cross our two bridges but our ecomony never benefited from Free Trade. Our downtown resemble a ghost town and our shopping district is slowly becoming empty. yet our new county jail is filled. In a county of 138,000 we manage to lock out 40,000 people each year. We are producing but producing criminals here in America. because jobs just don’t exist.
But then again, what is happening on Wall Street or the Bankers or Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, who is the real crooks. These people are collecting millions for scaming the system. We are locking up the wrong people in America!
I think every unemployed worker should get a hundard thousand dollars as part of the next stimulate package to create a new business and that business must hire at least 1 person. that would create 10 million jobs in a single year! It would be cheaper than the current economic plan and create more jobs. Instead my government wasting money saving some mouse in San Francisco bay while hundards of Americans are homeless and living in Parks.