Just one year ago, the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent. Now it is 7.6 percent.
The job loss numbers released today by the Labor Department show employers slashed 598,000 jobs in January--the deepest cut in payrolls in a single month since December 1974. In the last 13 months alone, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs.
With more Americans having lost jobs in January than in any month in the past 34 years, there can be no sugar coating the grim numbers in this report.
More horrific firsts reported in the BLS jobs report:
- Household survey employment fell 1.239 million, the worst since records began in 1948.
- Only about 12.7 million workers are employed by U.S. manufacturers, the fewest since February 1946.
- The manufacturing sector lost an enormous 207,000 jobs, which is a 1.6 percent drop in one month. The service industry lost 279,000 jobs; retail dropped 45,000 and business services declined 121,000.
- 626,000 people made first-time claims for state jobless benefits in the week ending Jan. 31-- the most since 1982.
- An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows there is one job for every four workers.
"Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes...Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse," wrote President Obama in a Washington Post op-ed yesterday.
If something doesn't change soon, economists estimate the deterioration of the labor market could lead to a 9.75 percent unemployment rate by the end of 2009. In light of dire numbers like this, the sense of urgency surrounding has the recovery plan before Congress has reached a new high pitch...which begs the question: will obstructionist Republicans in Congress finally move the economic recovery bill?
These grim unemployment numbers come to us on the same day that President Obama named his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a fifteen-member team which includes SEIU's Anna Burger. This new economic team will be charged in part with finding a way to address the millions of people who are out of work. "Millions of Americans are being put out of work. It is time for Congress to act," President Obama said today. "It is time to pass an economic recovery and reinvestment plan to get our economy moving again."
