Job Losses Soar

Ugh…it’s not looking so good.

U.S. employers axed payrolls by 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years and far more than expected, government data on Friday showed, as the year-old recession hammered every corner of the U.S. economy.
U.S. stock markets opened lower, oil prices and the dollar weakened and U.S. government bond prices rallied as the data showed the U.S. downturn was deepening.
“You can’t get much uglier than this. The economy has just collapsed, and has gone into a free fall,” said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York.
The Labor Department said the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent last month, the highest since 1993, from 6.5 percent in October. It would have been even higher except for an exodus of Americans who became discouraged in their search for work and left the labor force.

According to the BLS, there are currently 10.3 million Americans out of work.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on December 5th, 2008 at 10:47 am

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