PrintApril 4, 2008
Jobs Report Shows Employment Decline
The unemployment report out today gives more evidence that the economy is probably headed toward a recession.
The BLS says the economy lost 80.000 jobs last month - the third monthly decline in a row:
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.Revised figures for January and February also show more significant job losses - 76,000 for each month. And the losses appeared across the board in all sectors of the economy with only the education, health care, leisure, and government sectors showing gains.
"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?"
The unemployment rate was the highest since September 2005, when significant job losses followed the devastating blows of Gulf Coast hurricanes.
The Fed will almost certainly cut interest rates again at their meeting later this month. The problem is, they can't get much lower than they are now at 2.25%. And every cut they make weakens an already anemic dollar in international markets.
Fed Chairman Bernard Bernanke is hopeful that the economy will pick up later this year after the stimulus package begins to work its way through. Other analysts are not so hopeful, predicting the unemployment will top 5.5% by the end of the year.
This is still historically a low percentage. But unless Bernanke is right, that number will almost certainly start inching upward in 2009.
