Unemployment Hits 25-Year High
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Economy, NewsThe U.S. economy continued to hemorrhage jobs in February, bringing total job losses over the last six months to more than 3.3 million, and taking the unemployment rate to its highest level in 25 years [now at 8.1%].
The government reported Friday that employers slashed 651,000 jobs in February, down from a revised loss of 655,000 jobs in January. December’s loss was also revised higher to a loss of 681,000 jobs, a 59-year high for losses in one month.
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March 6th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Ha! Ha! Rush Limbaugh has bad breath!
And he’s flatulant! And oh, yuck! Is he fugly…
In other news, Michael Jackson is making a comeback, and Obama’s little girls have a new swing set!
March 6th, 2009 at 11:26 am
At this point, it seems as though the best-case scenario is for unemployment to bottom out somewhere between 9.5 and 10.5%. But given that we’re still apparently seeing an acceleration in the rate of loss, I would not be surprised if it went as high as 12.
The only consolation one can take is from looking at a historical graph of the unemployment rate. Past performance is of course no guarantee of future results, but it usually provides a reasonable baseline for forecasting. Better than nothing, anyway.
What the historical graph illustrates is that during major recessions unemployment grows quite quickly. There is always a period of a year of so where the receding economy hemhorrages jobs and the unemployment rate goes from around 4 or 5 to the 8.5 to 10 range. In other words, the number of people unemployed roughly doubles. In the past, unemployment has always bottomed out around 10, plus or minus lets say 1.5 for now. Then after it bottoms out, the economy seems to grow new jobs almost as quickly as they were shed. In other words, the pointy parts of the graph tend to look roughly the same on both sides. If the graph rises quickly on the left side of the peak, it tends to drop almost as quickly on the right.
Of course, we’ll all feel better about this if and when we see some signs of a bottom. Let’s all pray that happens within the next 3 or 4 months, and refrain from devouring one another. OK?
March 6th, 2009 at 11:46 am
I would not be surprised if it went as high as 12…
And if it does I won’t hold you to it. There’s gonna be a lot of those part-time & “disenfranchised” unemployed out there, too, who aren’t counted un the gub’mint calculation.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
KK:
Actually, from the purely self-interested pov, I’d like to see both housing prices and stocks come down a bit more. Sold my last house, renting and sitting on cash here.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Well, don’t you fret, Big Mike. I think Timmy Geithner has got you covered on that one.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Snoop:
Yeah. Geithner. Because things were going just great til that asshole came along.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
October 2003 – President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
2006 – Became a member of the ‘Group of Thirty’
March 2008 – Arranged rescue of Bear Stearns and bail out AIG
2009 – Secretary of the Treasury
Yeah, he’s not dirty with this at all.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Snoop, Mike raises an interesting point. How come your posts focus exclusively on the faults of the folks who just took over.
And maybe that’s somewhat warranted if you are focused on the financial errors that might still somehow be preventable. But 20 years from now, will the tale you tell of the crash of the 2000’s have a chapter on triple-A rated CDOs? Will you focus exclusively on gov’t incompetence and ennabling, or will you have something to say about, lets face it, Wall St fraudulence?
March 6th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Because they’re the ones in authority, with power to effect positive change. Sure, Bush f*cked up all kinds of budgetary policy, but he’s HISTORY, darling. He’s sitting in Crawford sipping a chilly Coors and forgetting the cares of the world.
Will you focus exclusively on gov’t incompetence and ennabling, or will you have something to say about, lets face it, Wall St fraudulence?
Sure, all of it. I’d much rather stop the coming carnage than write a book about it 20 years from now.
Obama has the power to restore sane fiscal power, and if he does that, he’ll be ‘my guy’, but I don’t see ANY sign of that.
If this economy goes through the floor, it’s all on his head.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Don’t worry everybody, Helicopter Ben is on the case. We have unlimited money in this country. Its called a printing press. The Obama administration will be able to create new jobs from thin air, doing whatever, and we will pay everybody good salaries with printed money. Heck, we could keep doing this and go down to 0% unemployment if we wanted! Problem solved. What could go wrong?
March 7th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Great point Jimmy. Flooding the country with dollars that have no backing is pretty damn clever, not to mention politically expedient. The consequences don’t kick in till after you’re gone, by which time everyone forgets that things like, say, “trickle down” economics, were a ruse of the highest order and it gives time for an entire political party to build a myth that you were a great president. Yes, Obama is certainly “Reaganesque”.