February Jobs Numbers: More Bad News
March 06, 2009
Stunningly bad news on the nation’s jobless rate today: Unemployment worsened to 8.1 percent in February, from 7.6 percent in January, the highest level in more than a quarter century, according to Labor Department data. We’re now looking at historical comparisons of joblessness not to the bad recession of the Reagan years but to the Depression era. This from Bloomberg:
Employers eliminated 651,000 jobs, the third straight month that losses surpassed 600,000 — the first time that’s happened since the data began in 1939. The plunge of America’s economy continued to devastate working families. The government announced today that 651,000 jobs were lost last month.
And from The New York Times:
[E]conomists expect that unemployment will continue to rise for the rest of the year and into early 2010, with the unemployment rate reaching 9 to 10 percent by the time a recovery begins. With so many job losses occurring in manufacturing, economists say that many workers will struggle to find new jobs that pay as much as they had been earning, even when the recession ends.
That is why AFSCME made supporting President Obama’s stimulus bill the top legislative priority in our “Make America Happen” campaign - our effort to win long term investment in public services, win quality affordable health care for all and strengthen the middle class through the Employee Free Choice Act. The economic stimulus bill will go a long way toward restarting our economy and helping states, counties and cities provide the vital services that the public relies on in times of crisis. We know it's not a panacea for the historic problems we are seeing at the state and local level -- but we know that without the stimulus bill our members and the American people would feel much more pain. With today’s new report of job losses and record unemployment, it is more vital than ever that Congress move quickly to pass President Obama’s budget, reform health care and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. We need to rebuild our economy, put people back to work and renew the American Dream.
