America Losing Jobs
Unemployment is up.
The United States is now losing jobs.
As Robert Reich writes, "Total job losses since the first of the year are now 438,000. That's a loss of 73,000 a month. The economy needs to CREATE 125,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. In other words, this hole is getting deeper."
The national job situation continued to sour in June with a net loss of 62,000 payroll jobs, the government said Thursday. Private economists warned not to expect a turnaround until 2009. The grim outlook reflected six straight months of job cuts — a sustained slide that hadn’t occurred since 2001-02 — and an unchanged 5.5 percent unemployment rate, the highest level in four years. “This statistic was greatly affected by the number of discouraged adults who have left the labor force,” said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland who follows the labor market. “Factoring in the decline in the number of adults participating in the labor force, the unemployment rate is closer to 7.2 percent.” Voter surveys indicate the economy is the top concern, and economists said they expect the June jobs report to cause presidential contenders to focus more on the topic. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday also revised upward the job loss numbers initially reported for April and May. U.S. employers cut 52,000 more jobs in those months than first tallied. Since December, payroll employment has fallen by 438,000 jobs. Another indicator, also reported Thursday, suggested further upward revisions in jobless numbers can be expected. Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 404,000 last week, the U.S. Department of Labor said in a separate report. That brought the national four-week moving average of new jobless claims to its highest level since October 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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