U.S. Unemployment Rate at 14-Year High
Yesterday, PoliGazette reported that real estate tycoon Donald Trump warned Fox News’ Greta von Susteren that the U.S. government would publish unemployment numbers “that are going to make your head spin.” Today, we can confirm that Trump spoke the truth: the American economy is shredding jobs at the fastest rate since 2001.
Increasingly more jobs are likely to be cut in the coming weeks and months, quite possibly resulting in worse unemployment numbers than in the recession of the early 1980s.
240,000 jobs were cut in November, marking the 10th consecutive month that more jobs were lost than created. At this moment, more than 1.2 million jobs have been lost in 2008, and more than 650,000 since August.
The unemployment rate climbed to 6.5%, the highest rate since 1994.
Sadly it seems that the worst is yet to come. Economists expect the unemployment rate to rise even more in the coming months, possibly leading to the worst recession since the Great Depression.
The stock markets seem to agree with those expectations: “Since Election Day, the stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, is down a smidgen over 10 percent,” expert James Pethokoukis reported for his blog.
There is discussion about whether or not the stock markets are responding to president-elect Barack Obama’s victory last Tuesday. This could indeed be a factor, for Obama is most certainly not considered to be a friend of business, but the main reason for the continued fall of the stock markets is, quite simply, that the U.S. economy is in a very unhealthy shape. A John McCain victory would have done little to counter the job cuts. Restoring consumer confidence too is about much more than who wins an election.
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