Breaking News: 524,000 Jobs Lost in Dec., Unemployment Hits 7.2 Percent (Worst Year Since WWII)

[Hissyspit]

Source: MSNBC

Job losses rise in Dec., unemployment 7.2 pct.

December figures cap a year featuring job losses every month

Pat Sullivan / AP

BREAKING NEWS

updated 1 minute ago
WASHINGTON - Trying to survive a deepening recession, employers are cutting their work forces to the bone, leaving more Americans unemployed and with dim prospects of finding a new job any time soon.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the jobless rate rose to 7.2 percent in December and payrolls dropped by 524,000 jobs, capping a year when job losses were logged every month and presaging more job losses to come.

MORE AT LINK

AP LINK: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090109/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/financial_meltdown

Jobless rate jumps to 7.2 percent in December

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer – 1 min ago

WASHINGTON – The government says the nation's unemployment rate bolted to 7.2 percent in December, the highest since early 1993, as employers slashed 524,000 jobs.
The Labor Department's report underscores the terrible toll of the deepening recession and highlights the hard task President-elect Barack Obama faces in resuscitating the flat-lined economy. For all of 2008, the economy lost 2.6 million jobs. That was the most since 1945, when nearly 2.8 million jobs were lost, although the number of jobs in the U.S. has more than tripled since then.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trying to survive a deepening recession, employers are cutting their work forces to the bone, leaving more Americans unemployed and with dim prospects of finding a new job any time soon.

- snip -

If the conservative 2.4 million estimate of net payroll reductions for 2008 proves correct, it would mark the first annual job loss since the previous recession in 2001. It also would be the worst year of job losses since 1945, when employers slashed nearly 2.8 million jobs, though the number of jobs in the U.S. has more than tripled since then.

MORE AT LINK

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28574446

---

Hey, all you ignorant, delusional right-wingers and willfully ignorant Americans: Thanks a bunch.

[Joanne98]

1. Here's marketwatch....

Unemployment rate rises to 7.2%, the highest in 16 years

Carnage continues with 524,000 jobs lost in Dec.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, closing out the worst year for job losses since World War II, the Labor Department said Friday.
Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost in 2008, with 1.9 million destroyed in just the past four months, according to a survey of work places. It's the biggest job loss in any calendar year since 1945, when 2.75 million jobs were lost as the wartime economy was demobilized.
The unemployment rate rose to 7.2%, the highest in 16 years. Unemployment increased by 632,000 to 11.1 million, according to the survey of households. That same household survey showed employment falling by 806,000 in December. Read the full report.
In 2008, the unemployment rate rose by 2.3 percentage points and unemployment increased by 3.6 million.
The report was worse than expected, with payrolls in October and November revised lower by a total of 157,000 jobs. November's loss was revised to 584,000.
Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected payrolls to fall by 500,000 and the unemployment rate to rise to 7.1%. See Economic Calendar.
Total hours worked in the economy fell 1.1%, with the average workweek falling to the shortest ever. The number of people working part-time because of the slowing economy rose by 715,000 to 8.04 million.
An alternative measure of unemployment that includes workers too discouraged to look for a job rose to 13.5% from 12.6% in November; it's the highest in the 13 years since those data have been kept.
Job losses were widespread. Only 25% of 274 industries were hiring in December.
Goods-producing industries cut 251,000 jobs in December, including 149,000 in manufacturing. The factory workweek plunged below 40 hours to a record low 39.9 hours, and average overtime fell to just 3 hours. Of 84 manufacturing industries, just 11% were hiring.
Services-producing industries cut 273,000 jobs in December, including 67,000 in retail trade and 113,000 in business services. Temporary-help jobs fell by 81,000. Health-care industries added 32,000 workers.
Average hourly earnings increased by 5 cents, or 0.3%, to $18.36 an hour. Hourly pay rose 3.7% in 2008, outpacing the 0.6% increase in the consumer price index through November.

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BF9716B93%2D2009%2D4F9D%2DA2CC%2D6890DA427BF2%7D

[Hissyspit]

24. Graphic From Think Progress: "Change in Non-Farm Payrolls for 2008" Yikes.

[bdamomma]

35. mission accomplished huh bush and cheney

damn you all for taking this country down.

[No Elephants]

79. I am not a fan of Bushco, but they did not do this alone. They had lots of help from

both Republican Congresses and Democratic Congresses, not to mention Ronnie Raygun, Poppy Bush and, yes, from the master triangulator, Big Dog (e.g., Glass Steagall). And, from us as well. De-regulation and the culture of "anything goes," as long as I have money and don't have to pay a lot for gasoline was not created in a day, or even in eight years.

Unfortunately, Obama is looking like a pretty good triangulator, too. I hope he remembers that FDR did fine rescuing the country from Hoover, until FDR started doing what the fiscal conservatives wanted. Then, only WW II helped him. This time, though, being in wars is not helping us.

[LaPera]

39. HIGHEST SINCE BUSH SR LEFT OFFICE IN JAN 1993-EVEN HIGHER WHEN BUSH JR LEAVES OFFICE IN JAN 2009

In the fact there are tens of millions more people in the country since 1993, and millions more out of work who are not being counted in Dec 2008!

FUCKING REPUBLICANS IDEOLOGY & AGENDA!

[Jackpine Radical]

59. Well, at least he got to beat Poppy in another statistic.

[Phred42]

40. Can we stop reporting the U3 number like Bush and all of MSM Does?

The more accurate number is the U6 ( http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm )

Which is now, January 2009, 13.5

We have had double digit unemployment since roughly June of last year

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Just one of our parting Republicon gifts to you American proles. SMIRK." - Commander AWOL (R)

"Deal with it. But don't worry abouy me and my 'elite' fatcat Republicon Homelander cronies. We have have Massive Boodles of Profiteering Big Bucks in our Swiss Bank accounts. Too bad (smirk) about you Americans. Smirk."

- Commander AWOL (R)

[bdamomma]

36. he will need more than a gate around his 2 million dollar house

in Dallas.

[AzDar]

3. Heckuva job, Bushie.

:puke:

[Odin2005]

4. Is it a Depression yet? n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Depression had 25% unemployment

Even the recessions of the 70's routinely hit 15%.

:-)

[JCMach1]

14. Please check this link for analysis

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3681309

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. It appears my memory was accurate

And that the current rate mirrors many recessions we've experienced since then, even using the old methodology.

:shrug:

[struggle4progress]

64. "if unemployment were . tallied . (as) in the 1930s, today’s jobless rate would be . 16.5 percent"

"if unemployment were .. tallied .. (as) in the 1930s, today’s jobless rate would be .. 16.5 percent"

[pinqy]

69. Unemployment WAS NOT tallied in the 1930's

There was no survey or any reliable or accurate methods of measuring unemployment in the 30's. The first real efforts at measuring unemployment and the labor force weren't made until 1940.

[struggle4progress]

72. The US Census appears to have collected such information and provided such estimates in the 1930s

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1528.html

[Wednesdays]

18. The Great Depression

had 25% unemployment at its worst. Do we have to match or beat that before people call this a Depression? :shrug:

[BlueJazz]

33. My feelings also...and you better believe the actual figures are HIGHER.

:)

[Hissyspit]

19. See Madhound's post #11. nt

[alcibiades_mystery]

20. Well, yes, I didn't say we weren't as bad as the recessions of the 1970's

:-)

[Hissyspit]

21. I hadn't read the comments upthread either.

Seems to me pretty definite, though, that things are gonna get worse before they better.

[alcibiades_mystery]

23. Oh, I suspect they will

I think we'll hang around at 16-17% real unemployment (i.e., 1980's methodology figures) for two or more years, which will be an epochal catastrophe in its own right.

[Phred42]

41. Don't forget they defined unemployment differently in the 20's and 30's than we do now.

Right now we are already at 13.5%

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

[alcibiades_mystery]

44. Yes, four or five people have already pointed that out

...

[Phred42]

47. missed that.

:shrug:

[alcibiades_mystery]

51. Yes

you did.

[Phred42]

53. relax

[pinqy]

70. But why has not one...

until me pointed out that they didn't measure unemployment in the 1920's and 30's? The US government certainly didn't do any labor force surveys (other than employment levels) until 1940. And they started precisely because there were no measures.

[Imperialism Inc.]

5. As bad as it is, it's still about 170K better than some thought earlier

this week.

[PassingFair]

8. They've been prepping us for the bad news for over a week.

So we wouldn't FREAK.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

38. Well they didn't do a very good job.

I'm about to crap my pants over here.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. What a difference a day makes.

Jobless claims fall sharply

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits dropped sharply from last week to a three-month low, according to a government report released Thursday.

The Labor Department said that initial filings for state jobless benefits fell 24,000 to 467,000 for the week ended Jan. 3.


http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/08/news/economy/jobless_claims/index.htm?postversion=2009010809

[BR_Parkway]

16. They left out the info in their other article about the states of OH, NC

NY and CA all had systems crash from being overloaded with people trying to file unemployment claims - I would expect next weeks numbers to be more accurate once all those people who couldn't file have a chance to.

[AngryOldDem]

26. Job losses in the Dayton, OH area alone last year were 6,700.

And this number does **not** include the Dec. 23 closure of a GM plant in the south suburbs, but what's another 200-300 jobs? :sarcasm:

The only cities reporting worse numbers are Cleveland and Toledo. If you want to see the definition of a dead city, come to Dayton.

[xchrom]

7. recommend -- we're heading for 10% really fast. nt

[PassingFair]

9. Already there in my state.

[xchrom]

13. and it's very sad too. nt

[pattmarty]

10. And, THAT'S "W"'s legacy..................

[MadHound]

11. What's really sad is that if we were counting unemployment like we were in 1980

Our real unemployment numbers would be about double this 7.2% figure. However over the years, starting with Reagan and continuing after him, presidents have jiggered with the unemployment stats to make them look as good as possible, sacrificing accuracy for propaganda.

[Kolesar]

32. They added the military to the workforce

Despite that the military has scant effect on productivity or economic growth.

[intheflow]

76. I was just going to post the same thing.

Unemployment numbers are a farce. They don't count people who are no longer registered/elligible for benefits, nor do these numbers take in the extraordinary amount of people who are grossly underemployed to the extent that they face the same hardships as fully unemployed people. You can be making $20 an hour but only working 10 hours a week. That's only about $7000 a year after taxes. You can't live on that, especially if you have a family, but it's not counted in the unemployment numbers. :grr:

[lonestarnot]

15. The bushitler dust up, dust down, dust all around.

[Roland99]

22. Make that 524,001. I don't count in those numbers.

Losing mine after Jan. 30 but since I'm contracted thru a placement firm, I'm still technically employed by them even though I won't be earning a paycheck in 3 weeks.

[lizziegrace]

30. 524,002

Lost mine Monday along with 5 others. No severance. I get a check on the 16th for 6 days and that's it. I just paid my daughter's college tuition the week before. One paycheck between a person and the street? Less than that for me.

[Roland99]

42. Oh dang...

I hope you find something very quickly!

I have 5 weeks before I find myself in negative financial territory.

[lizziegrace]

60. I hope the same for you

No one deserves this.

[bjb]

65. 524,003

I am done on January 31st. No pension or severance after 28 years.

[Kool Kitty]

77. My husband is one of those December numbers.

Worked for the hospital for 21 years. "Laid off" (ha-like they are going to call him back anytime soon) the Friday before Christmas. Happy Holidays.

[Xipe Totec]

25. Highest in 16 years...

Highest since the other dumb Bush was in office.

Interesting.

[liberation]

27. Poppy Bush was an economic Clusterf*ck...

Which always boggled my mind regarding Jr's political viability in the 2000 elections.

Let's see his grand dad aided the nazi war effort, and was caught up in a plot to over throw the US gov. His daddy presided through one of the worst recessions in the late XX century (it is the economy stupid, anyone?). His brother was up to the neck in the S&L scandal...

It seems a mixture of the American public's gold fish-like memory, and the media complicity hiding of the facts regarding the Bush family legacy (baggage really).

Any other candidate with such baggage would have been nonviable, toxic actually. This moron was allowed 2 tours of duty in destroying the republic.

[Optimistic]

28. Republicans think this is Great News

Repuks will tell you that this is great because labor costs are down. A perfect world to them is that every job goes to China and Mexico at 50 cents an hour, That will bring their costs down so that they can show how good they are at managing their costs to shareholders.

The good news is that we will be able to get 72 inch HD TVs for less than $50.00. The bad news is a minor detail. No one will be able to afford a loaf of bread when we have 100% unemployment, But to the Brainiacs in the Repuk party feels this is just a minor detail.

[PassingFair]

67. Welcome to DU, Optimistic!

Every thing is legal
until they MAKE you stop.



:sarcasm:

[DuaneBidoux]

29. I hope Obama sticks with his idea of allowing people to get money from their 401k

I have had a crap job (which now looks like it could be in trouble). I have been looking for work for nearly one year and making up the difference from savings.

By the end of July at the latest that money will be gone and the only thing I will have left is my IRA. So, I will take some no matter what if I don't have a job but it sure would be nice if he did away with the penalty, at least temporarily.

[corkhead]

31. Thank you Paine Webber

[BlueJazz]

34. All the chickens are coming home to >>>

[FirstLight]

37. not counting those who aren't qualifying for unemployment...

so, maybe we should round that figure up to at least 10%, eh?

I am in that boat. Hours cut to 8 a week, having to apply for aid to keep me and 3 kids afloat, with utilities in the 15day notice stage ...

happy freaking new year

[haw river]

43. 1981-1982

five million jobs lost
one month high 8.5% unemployment
highest since greatest depression
clarenceswinney
[e-mail]

[whistle]

45. The coming four months we will see even worse numbers as the official unemployment rate

...climbs to 10.5% to 11.5% range as predicted for the period following Sept 2009. Add to that the real unemployed numbers which BushCo has been hiding with its phony statistical methods for job creation and what the Obama administration faces are unemployment numbers which will show real unemployment of the workforce to be in the 18.0% to 22.0% range.

On January 21, 2009 Obama must begin an FDR New Deal type economic recovery program with massive fiscal spending and jobs creation, tax the rich, drop this free trade crap and floating currency exchanges and begin building economic alliances based on fair trade and fixed dollar based exchange rates with Russia, China and India as well as Mexico and Canada if these two countries are willing.

[Laf.La.Dem.]

46. Obama's recession

Sad to say - this is already being called Obama’s recession as per the right wing nuts - Rush - etc.
:spank:

[Abacus]

48. 7.5% in '92

http://www.bls.gov/cps/prev_yrs.htm

Using raw numbers is misleading because of the population differences. Bad? Yes. Depression? No.

[GreenTea]

52. Who will the republicans blame BOTH Bush's unemployment #'s on, Reagan & Clinton?

Certainly not Reagan....So who then, this is no coincidence, nothing is!

It's clear as can be it's republican corporate ideology....Screw the workers just as long as the rich and corporations do well....And so many workers keep voting for republicans, against their own best interest.

[haw river]

49. ALL RECESSIONS WERE GOP

Each "Significant" Recession has been under a R president.

JOBS--from 1921 to 2003
D presidents=1,800,000 per year
R presidents = 800,000 per year

over twice as many with fewer years in the office

add on five more of Bush it is worse

a vote for a R=vote to reduce standard of living for vast majority of citizens.

clarenceswinney
[e-mail]

[GreenTea]

56. All recessions were REPUBLICAN!

Let's not sugarcoat it with terminology that the republicans now prefer (GOP)!

[kestrel91316]

50. Poppy must be SOOOOO proud of that boy of his.........

Oh, but I'm sure they will find a way to blame Clinton and Obama for it.

[GreenTea]

54. Yeah, Jr. numbers are the highest since Pappy's! Pappy will be so proud of Jr. when

Jr. beats his 1992/93 numbers by January 20th 2009.

[KillCapitalism]

55. In my circle of friends and aquaintences...

I probably now know of more people that are unemployed than employed.

DUers are being overly optimistic about the coming unemployment numbers in the future. I'd say 50% unemployment (real rate, not the government's sugarcoated figure) wouldn't be out of the question.

[w8liftinglady]

57. In my work(hospital) I see SO many people who are no longer employed

of course,people lose their jobs if they have to be out with an illness(which is why they don't come in the first place).My son almost lost HIS job taking me to the hospital several times.

[mcollier]

61. That's wild... What area do you live?

Things will turn around for the better, we'll just have some tough growing pains to go through though.

[young_at_heart]

58. In the meantime, the CEO's have REALLY prospered

Income disparity is higher than it's ever been. No problems for the Bush/Cheney cronies. By the way, if I remember correctly, Cheney had no money as a young man---I wonder what his wealth is now?

[goforit]

62. And thanks to Paulson.....The Boys who hold the dough did outstanding with bonuses

[struggle4progress]

63. The true rate is above 8%: Bureau of Labor Statistics don't count as

unemployed a number of people who "Searched For Work," "Want a job now," and are "Available to work now," nor does the BLS count those who "Want a job now" but are presumed (by reason of long employment) to be "Persons who believe no job is available"

These two categories together are estimated to comprise (1908 + 642 =) 2500 thousand = 2.5 million people

[pinqy]

68. And there's a reason for that....

People who haven't searched for work in over a month, regardless of what they want or how available, haven't been looking for work in over a month. They're not actually taking part in the labor market. And "who "Want a job now" but are presumed (by reason of long employment) to be "Persons who believe no job is available"" is a complete misinterpretation on your part. Discouraged workers are those who have not looked for work in the previous 4 weeks, but have sometime in the previous year and have stopped looking because they say they do not believe they would find anything. There's no "presumption" based on long (un?)employment.

[struggle4progress]

71. Examining "BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures" in the October 1995

Monthly Labor Review (which is the publication to which the BLS website refers one for definitions), you will see that the paragraph discussing discouraged workers actually does refer to length of unemployment; since the sampling survey is not included, and the associated calculations are not provided, one has no option but to infer what is meant, but since the Reagan era "length of unemployment" has regularly been described by media as one of the determinative factors for classifying workers as discouraged

The official unemployment figures seems to coincide with the sum of LNS13008396 (Number Unemployed for Less than 5 Weeks), LNS13008756 (Number Unemployed for 5-14 Week), and LNS13008516 (Number Unemployed for 15 Weeks & over) of "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey." LNS13008516 has a subpopulation LNS13008636 (Number Unemployed for 27 Weeks & over), currently representing about 55% of the larger group

Looking at the mean (19 wk) and median (10 wk) unemployment lengths for the so-called "labor force," one concludes easily that no one long unemployed is being counted as unemployed

In fact the survey is quite limited, and most of the data are not actually empirical but are inferred

[pinqy]

74. No it doesn't....

I find it funny you refer to an article where I personally know one of the authors. Read it again on page 24 of the Oct Monthly Labor Review: "In order to be classified as discouraged in the redesigned survey, persons must explicitly want and be available for work and have searched for work in the prior year, even though they are not currently looking for a job because they feel their search would be in vain." Nothing about presuming anything due to length of unemployement. Nothing anywhere.

And the definition of discouraged worker didn't change under Reagan, but under Clinton. Prior to the 1994 redesign (and after the 1967 redesign), a "discouraged worker" was one who had not looked for work in the previous 4 weeks, but had looked sometime in the past, and was available to work (prior to 1967 this definition was included in "unemployed"). The 1994 redesign added a time requirement that the previous job search had to be within the previous year.

So it can't have been "since the Reagan era" since there wasn't even a time requirement for search. And length of joblessness has never been part of discouraged. It's not an presumption, the classification is based on what the respondent says.

Umm, the unemployment figures don't "seem to coinceide" with LNS13008396, LNS13008756 and LNS13008516.. those ARE the unemployment figures. It's like you're pointing at George Clooney and saying "Hey, that guy kind of looks like George Clooney."

Ooooh, this should be fun... which of the CPS data are inferred?

[struggle4progress]

75. (1) The paragraph on p 22 introducing the notion "discouraged" does mention

length of unemployment. Unfortunately, all the discussions are vague and non-algorithmic. In particular, the numbers are based on surveys, together with certain assumptions: these clearly include -- as the statistical categories and also the literature shows -- some assumptions about relations between length of unemployment and "discouraged", whether these assumptions are incorporated by cut-off ("persons not employed for a year or more will be considered discouraged") or by some fancier statistical formulae ("95% of persons not employed for a year or more will be considered discouraged"). A trace of this appears in the decision (for example) not to report length of unemployment in detail beyond the half-year mark, which would make no sense if persons not employed long-term were still considered unemployed. If you want to dispute these observations -- which I think are rather obvious, given the choice of data to report, the characteristics of the reported data, and the expected political pressures on the BLS -- then you should provide, in detail, the actual numerics that transform the Current Population Survey into the reported numbers

(2) My reason, of course, for saying that unemployment figures "seem to coincide" with LNS13008396, LNS13008756 and LNS1300851, is that the numbers do not exactly agree: they do not even agree to round-off error. This, again, highlights the algorithmic issues and the questions of exactly how the numbers are obtained: it shows, at minimum, that the computations are not completely consistent. This, of course, might be expected from any statistical approach, but then one should again want to know the actual algorithms, since the political pressures might be expected to produce cute tinkering (such as replacing an arithmetic mean inappropriately by a geometric mean to reduce some inconvenient statistic)

(3)With respect to your final question "Which of the CPS data are inferred?" the proper answer is that the BLS is not reporting the CPS data directly: they are reporting statistical inferences from the CPS data, so, in some sense, all the reported BLS data are inferred. Again, the actual algorithmics are quite important: as higher order statistics require larger samples to estimate accurately than lower order statistics do, correlations between data will be less reliable that mere estimates of "typical" data, and rule-of-thumb surrogates for the variation of one type of data with respect to others are likely to be applied, since one can hardly ever compute them accurately anyway for anything other than distributions closely related to multivariate Gaussians. I know from prior experience how such rules-of-thumb can be used to fudge the data: and almost nobody ever will really devote the time to examine the computations in detail

[sarcasmo]

66. Kick and Nom, trying to survive in Michigan the last eight years has been rough.

[Liberal_in_LA]

73. kick

[No Elephants]

78. Worst since WWII? Is is as bad or worse than it was during the "Great" Depression or not?

[yamblaster200]

80. layoffs

The republicans believe corporate tax cuts are the answer. None of the companies are laying people off because they're taxes are too high, nor will any of them hire more people or expand their business if they're taxes are lowered. Their not going to hire more people or expand their businesses unless demand for what their making goes up, and that's not going to happen with american workers being underpaid and american jobs going out of the country. Tax cuts would be nothing more than a give away to the rich...and a slap in the face of the average american worker that lost their job. Republican economics are a joke...a 4 year old could figure out that it doesn't work.