Unemployment worst since 1983, hitting 8.5% mark
April 3, 2009 at 8:04 am by Wayne GarciaMarch was the 15th straight month of job losses, with the U.S. economy losing another 663,000 jobs, the monthly government labor report says this morning.
It was about what economists had expected.
The New York Times reports:
“There is no letup,” said James O’Sullivan, senior United States economist at UBS. “The trend has been truly dismal.”
The figures offered a stark contrast to some recent glimmers of life elsewhere in the economy, which have buoyed stock markets and heartened hopes for a turnaround. The sharp and continuing increase in unemployment suggests that even if the downward spiral is beginning to level off, job losses are likely to keep piling up for the rest of this year and into 2010.
Although the Federal Reserve expects unemployment to crest near 8.8 percent, many economists say it will rise above 10 percent and will only begin to ebb after the broader economy is well on the way to recovery – a wrenching forecast for the 13.2 million people in the United States who are currently unemployed.
