Today's jobs report shows a U.S. economy that remains quite weak and prone to a double-dip recession. What recovery has developed has proven both slow and shallow. The Obama administration, and the near-trillion dollar stimulus bill have done nothing but add to the overal debt burden. This, along with distractions such as health care reform, Gitmo, and Cap and Trade have simply mucked the works up at a time when the government should have been focused on the economy as its #1 priority. They did not do so, and now the American people are suffering under continued economic stagnation...
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 85,000 jobs in December, cooling optimism on the labor market's recovery and keeping pressure on President Barack Obama to find ways to spur job growth.
...The unemployment rate was unchanged at 10 percent in December, but that reflected a surprisingly large number of people leaving the labor force.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected nonfarm payrolls to hold steady last month, with the jobless rate edging up to 10.1 percent.
...For the whole of 2009, the economy shed 4.2 million jobs, according to the Labor Department's survey of employers.
The department's survey of households offered an even gloomier assessment of the job market, showing that 661,000 people left the work force last month.
The report showed there were 929,000 "discouraged workers" who had given up looking for a job, up from 642,000 a year earlier. Chris Rupkey, an economist with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, called the rise in discouraged workers "a simply astonishing number that borders on the frightening."
"If they were still looking for work and counted as the unemployed, the unemployment rate would have been 10.5 percent," he said. "This clearly isn't your father's recession. It is looking more like your great-grandfathers. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
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Full article here:
Employers unexpectedly cut jobs in December - Yahoo! Finance
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 85,000 jobs in December, cooling optimism on the labor market's recovery and keeping pressure on President Barack Obama to find ways to spur job growth.
...The unemployment rate was unchanged at 10 percent in December, but that reflected a surprisingly large number of people leaving the labor force.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected nonfarm payrolls to hold steady last month, with the jobless rate edging up to 10.1 percent.
...For the whole of 2009, the economy shed 4.2 million jobs, according to the Labor Department's survey of employers.
The department's survey of households offered an even gloomier assessment of the job market, showing that 661,000 people left the work force last month.
The report showed there were 929,000 "discouraged workers" who had given up looking for a job, up from 642,000 a year earlier. Chris Rupkey, an economist with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, called the rise in discouraged workers "a simply astonishing number that borders on the frightening."
"If they were still looking for work and counted as the unemployed, the unemployment rate would have been 10.5 percent," he said. "This clearly isn't your father's recession. It is looking more like your great-grandfathers. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
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Full article here:
Employers unexpectedly cut jobs in December - Yahoo! Finance
