Recession Job Losses Passes 3 Million
Even though the market has shrugged off the terrible unemployment numbers today due to the “big announcement” coming early next week with Geithner’s new plan the facts still remain intact…
…the numbers were terrible!
From today’s WSJ:
U.S. employment plunged in January, a government report showed, bringing total job losses since the recession started in December 2007 to 3.6 million.
Half of those losses occurred in the last three months alone, and the stepped-up pace of layoffs in recent months suggests no end in sight to the economic downturn.
The report, which included another sharp rise in the unemployment rate to a 16-year high, will likely up the heat on U.S. lawmakers to enact a large fiscal stimulus package.
Nonfarm payrolls, which are calculated by a survey of establishments, tumbled 598,000 in January, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday, the most since December 1974 and well above the 525,000 drop Wall Street economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey expected. December was revised to show an even steeper decline of 577,000.
The government included revisions for all of 2008, which showed that the U.S. lost about 3 million jobs last year, roughly 400,000 more than first thought. The economy has shed 3.5 million jobs since January 2008, the largest 12-month decline since the government started compiling those figures in 1939.
We still feel over here that these ongoing job loses have not been fully factored into the market. Unemployment is a lagging indicator and it just goes to show how tough times are. And as far the overall unemployment rate:
The unemployment rate, which is calculated using a survey of households, jumped 0.4 percentage point to 7.6%, the highest since September 1992. Some economists think the jobless rate may hit 9% in coming months.
Any investors up for taking bets for 10%+ by year end?
Source:
Recession Job Losses Surpass Three Million
Brian Blackstone
WSJ, February 6th, 2009, 10:24 A.M. ET
