Huge Job Losses Set Off Recession Alarms

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Associated Press

By JEANNINE AVERSA

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's no longer a question of recession or not. Now it's how deep and how long. Workers' pink slips stacked ever higher in March as jittery employers slashed 80,000 jobs, the most in five years, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 5.1 percent. Job losses are nearing the staggering level of a quarter-million this year in just three months.

For the third month in a row total U.S. employment rolls shrank - often a telltale sign that the economy has jolted dangerously into reverse.

At the same time, the jobless rate rose three-tenths of a percentage point, a sharp increase usually associated with times of deep economic stress.


Manpower Associates' Branch Manager Pam Johnson, left, and Becky Fuller, staffing specialist, discuss candidate job placement in St. Louis, Mo., on Friday, April 4, 2008. Manpower helps candidates find temporary work.(AP Photo/Sarah Conard)


The grim picture described by the Labor Department on Friday provided stark evidence of just how much the jobs market has buckled under the weight of the housing, credit and financial crises. Businesses and jobseekers alike are feeling the pain.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080405/D8VRL3280.html

[Xipe Totec]

1. Huge job losses set off recession alarms

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON - It's no longer a question of recession or not. Now it's how deep and how long. Workers' pink slips stacked ever higher in March as jittery employers slashed 80,000 jobs, the most in five years, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 5.1 percent. Job losses are nearing the staggering level of a quarter-million this year in just three months.

(snip)

"It is now very clear that the fat lady has sung for the economic expansion. The country has slipped into a recession," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. Indeed, there is widening agreement that the first recession since 2001 has arrived. Even Ben Bernanke, in a rare public utterance for a Federal Reserve chairman, used the "r" word, acknowledging for the first time this week that a recession was possible.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080405/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/economy_109

---

The Republican recession is here.

[tekisui]

2. The Republican War Recession.

[fasttense]

3. The US economy is just following the typical downturn when "free market" or neoliberal

policies are forced on a country. The poor get poorer, the middle class becomes the poor, jobs disappear, unemployment rises, underemployment is rampant, GDP declines, currencies devalue, excessive inflation sets in especially on basic survival needs, but the uber wealthy get fantastically rich.

Welcome to Milton Friedman's economy, or Pinochet's Chilean economy if you want a real world example. It only gets worse from here unless "free market" or neoliberal economic policies are changed.

[SpiralHawk]

11. Welcome to the republicon homelander depression

The republicons deserve full credit for implementing Friedman's cruel and insane economic "ideas."

No doubt the republicons will strive to weasel out of responsiblity, as usual, but let no one mistake: This is a republicon homelander depression -- all the way.

[Clovis Sangrail]

4. "jobless rate"

The 'jobless rate' is a bullshit propaganda tool.

People who don't apply for unemployment insurance don't count.
People who don't qualify for unemployment insurance don't count.
People who have been unemployed longer than the duration of unemployment insurance don't count.

[bluerum]

5. Yes - a sensible analysis take the feds raw numbers and multiplies by 10.

80k is probably closer to 800k.

[Clovis Sangrail]

6. I don't think the real unemplyoment rate is 51% but

I don't believe it's 5.1% either.

[bluerum]

7. Raw numbers - not the percentage.

[unblock]

22. ummm,

so if you multiply the "raw number" by 10, what happens to the percentage?

[greyghost]

21. Exactly, the true unemployment rate is closer to 10%.

[unblock]

24. sorry, this is a popular myth but it is not correct

it is correct to say that people who were so discouraged by the job market as to stop looking (e.g., join the army, go back to school, or become a full-time homemaker) don't count.

it is not correct to say that people who are looking but didn't apply or exhausted their unemployment insurance or don't qualify for unemployment insurance in the first place (other than because you're simply not looking for a job) don't count.

the unemployment numbers are NOT DERIVED from unemployment insurance, they are derived from sample surveys.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.faq.htm

Is the count of unemployed persons limited to just those people receiving
unemployment insurance benefits?

No; the estimate of unemployment is based on a monthly sample survey of
households. All persons who are without jobs and are actively seeking and
available to work are included among the unemployed. (People on temporary
layoff are included even if they do not actively seek work.) There is no
requirement or question relating to unemployment insurance benefits in the
monthly survey.

[Clovis Sangrail]

25. interesting

I will read more on this, thank you.
However, I hope you noted the next stanza as well.

Does the official unemployment rate exclude people who have stopped looking for
work?

Yes; however, there are separate estimates of persons outside the labor force
who want a job, including those who have stopped looking because they believe no
jobs are available (discouraged workers). In addition, alternative measures of
labor underutilization (discouraged workers and other groups not officially
counted as unemployed) are published each month in the Employment Situation news
release.

[unblock]

26. yes. also, i'm not saying the figures are perfect.

government statistics (particularly inflation) are certainly distorted in a number of ways.

the widely published unemployement rate also doesn't accurately reflect underemployment, as others have noted. if you have a job but are looking for a second one or simply a better paying one, you're considered employed. so if an anesthesiologist loses their $900,000/year job and resorts to flipping burgers part-time for $7/hr while waiting for a full-time medical job to open up, they're still considered employed.

[corporatemedia]

28. Also, feds count as "employed" anyone working 16 + hours per week...

even in a home business (like ebay?).

It is a rigged survey.

[Pale Blue Dot]

8. Ok, rant on.

NOBODY is talking about the implications of this, even on DU. This is a slow-motion disaster in the making because there are no jobs being created to replace the ones we are losing. There isn't even any mechanism for job creation currently in place. Our economy is the perfect storm. People are spending less due to lower wages and property values, higher prices, and job loss. Employers are dealing with the lower revenue by cutting jobs. IT'S A DEATH SPIRAL. Unlike in the 90's and the early part of this decade, there is no "bubble" that we can ride to bail us out.

Our candidates, and many posters here, talk about a "green revolution" that will help to bail us out. This is a total pipe dream that completely ignores the way our corporate economy works. As things get tighter and tighter, companies are going to focus on getting the most bang for their buck. They are going to CUT more jobs and they are going to CUT green initiatives. If we had had a reasonable President and a congress willing to fight, the time to inact legislation on this was several years ago, when times were good. It's too late now. We're already in the death spiral.

Take a listen to those who say, even here, that everything's going to be fine. What evidence are they providing? How many of them give a variation of the argument "This is America, we'll figure it out', or "There are always economic naysayers"? How many of them will mention one market or commodity as evidence, or one good day on Wall Street, while ignoring the macroeconomic factors cited above?

It is well past time for our candidates, and our community, to begin an open, HONEST dialogue about what the future holds for us. We need to discuss, with relatively clear heads, what that data means and the painful measures that we are going to have to undertake. People need to get their heads out of the sand and deal with this. And that goes double for Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

14. Oh, Finny, you nailed it.

The silence is deafening from all of them and too many of their few comments leave me to expect that the only fix they have conceived is "more of the same".

[Fovea]

15. Read "The Long Emergency"

By James Howard Kunstler.

He gets it pretty right, IMO.

Get out of suburbia while you can.
Get downtown, or outta town.

[NickB79]

19. Ditto, good analysis of what's coming

Start preparing now while you still can. Get out of debt, learn how to live on less of everything, get in shape and stay healthy.

[Karenina]

30. Here's an excerpt from Rolling Stone:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency

[Demeter]

16. Government Works Projects, Anyone?

There's enough infrastructure and the like to employ everyone, if Congress wishes to do anything about it. And then there's the Green conversion--getting people off the grid and into producing their own power at home.

Scrapping the curricula and revitalizing education.

Unionizing the hospitals and stripping health insurers of their turf with universal payer.

It could be done, if the will is there.

[BR_Parkway]

32. As long as China is willing to give us the money to do it with.....

[superconnected]

9. Employers chopped 80,000 jobs last month

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Employers buffeted by talk of recession slashed 80,000 jobs in March, the most in five years and the third straight month of losses.

At the same time, the national unemployment rate rose from 4.8 percent to 5.1 percent, the clearest signal yet that the economy might already be shrinking.

The new snapshot of the job market, released by the Labor Department Friday, underscored the damage that a trio of crises -in the housing, credit and financial sectors - has inflicted on companies, jobseekers and the economy as a whole.

"The labor market has indeed turned south," said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. "That was the one last bastion of hope to stay out of a recession. Now the question is how deep and how long will it last?"



Read more: http://www.komotv.com/news/business/17298119.html

[OhioChick]

10. This is only the tip of the iceberg. n/t

[TwixVoy]

27. We have had several thousand cut

at my company as well.

[truthisfreedom]

12. The bush depression.

[lunatica]

13. Expect it to get worse

This is only one aspect of Bush's scorched earth plan. Like every bully he will destroy everything rather than have someone else get it. We've had ample proof that he and Cheney are indifferent to the welfare of the country and that their only passion is for wealth and power which they can amass more of if all the equalizing aspects of Democracy are destroyed.

Cheney's reaction to the plight of the American people will be to say, "So?"

[opihimoimoi]

17. If we are to blame anyone...its THEM GOOPers...the REPUBLICAN PARTY

They voted for Bush not once but twice...8 years of very poor decisions and worse appointments resulted in this mess.

Vote BLUE

[Democrats_win]

18. Where's my copy of "The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush"?

Oh yeah. I never bought a copy because of Bush's first recession!

That MBA president is doing a heck of a job. 80,000 jobs lost in March? You've got to be kidding. This is the time when businesses hire. Springtime!

[Zhade]

20. Okay, so how bad is it REALLY? Because we know they're not telling the whole truth.

I *wish* a recession was all we were facing!

[greyghost]

23. Me too. This "downturn" will end up as the next Great Depression.

[fasttense]

29. Remember who caused the last Great Depression?

The republicans. You would have thought we had learned from history but I guess not.

This will be the 2nd Republican Great Depression.

I guess that is why the bushes put Chopper Ben in charge. He studied the last Republican Great Depression and decided it was the Fed's fault.

[samsingh]

31. i don't know what to make of the market.