More bad news:
Another 651,000 jobs were lost in February, adding to the millions who have been thrown out of work in this recession.
In a stark measure of the recession’s toll, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the national unemployment rate surged to 8.1 percent last month, its highest in 24 years.
The economy has now lost more than 4.4 million jobs since the recession started in December 2007, and economists expect that the losses will continue over the rest of the year and into 2010. The economy lost an upwardly revised 655,000 jobs in January, when the unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent. Some economists expect that the nation’s businesses could cut another two million jobs and that unemployment could reach 9 to 10 percent by the time a recovery begins.
Clearly this news today makes the point that we must move quickly to cut the capital gains tax rate.
4tehlulz
Just some more losers for Rick Santelli to taunt. Fuck ’em.
Punchy
So do we impeach Obama this month, or wait until April? It’s disgusting that he would allow so many jobs to disappear, and encourage so many lazy Negros to suck up the welfare monies of the overtaxed rich.
chrome agnomen
poor W inherits one recession, and now another dem takes only a month to plunge the country into another. where are my clutching pearls and smelling salts? only not joe can save us now!
David
Alert Level Raised to Red!!!
Sickness and disease could turn into a mushroom cloud of better health, reduced stress, and mental well being if we allow a national health care system.
nonymouse
Clearly, this is good new for John McCain.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I don’t think repealing the capital gains tax will be enough to save us this time. Clearly, we also need to bring back the gold standard.
El Cid
This is the wrong time to be trying to do too much at once. David Brooks should create a Blue Ribbon Commission of moderate conservatives to recommend small changes to the tax codes and relaxed rituals of cultural center-hunting to save us.
Face
The worst part of the "8.1" is it doesnt come close to capturing the underemployed. The lawyer-turned-fast-food-employee or JuCo prof-cum-teacher’s assistant, both making pennies on the previous dollar.
They’re employed, technically, but not even close to the salaries previously earned. And they’re drowning in debt.
joe from Lowell
Damn, the snark is thick on this thread! Let me try:
When I look at numbers like these, it really drives home how much of the stock market’s decline is the result of Barack Obama not engaging in enough happy talk.
Brian J
Not that this is really good in any sense other than "at least it’s not worse," but assuming the revision isn’t substantially worse, at least it’s remaining somewhat steady. I had worried that it would start to creep up to a million jobs per point, although to be fair, that wasn’t based on any economic analysis, just my gut feeling.
Of course, as Mark Haines said on CNBC this morning, at least we’re another month closer to the bottom, wherever that is. Yes, it’s CNBC, but he seems okay, and Erin Burnett is just beautiful. One can only wonder how much higher the Dow would move if she stripped off an article of clothing every time it increased by 100 points.
valdivia
Not enough coffee yet in the system to compete with this excellent snark. So I second all of your comments.
Dork
Dow 36000, in 17 minutes. Stocks in hand lotion and Kleenex companies quintuple.
Brian J
@El Cid:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s move too quickly. We’re, what, less than two months into an Obama administration? I like the fact that you’re suggesting a Blue Ribbon Comission–you really can’t do any better than that–but it needs to be headed by centrist bipartisan lawmakers like Susan Collins and Evan Bayh and opinion makers like David Broder. It shouldn’t start right now, obviously. Too much change too quickly, and all that.
@Face:
I believe the measure you’re talking about is U6, and it’s about 14.5, if I heard it on television correctly.
KevOH
Remember health care is a ‘privilege’, according to Rep. Wamp (distinguished republican from Tennessee). So the obvious solution is to let these unemployed MFers die, problem solved. Killing off the nouveau poore is the best way to achieve republican nirvana.
Comrade Jake
Where’s all this talk of a "crisis"? Until I see breadlines, we’re not in a crisis.
Dennis-SGMM
Obama’s French tendencies keep him from getting it: the problem is not that there aren’t enough jobs, the problem is that there are too many workers. Any sort of national health care will only make the problem worse by enabling these surplus workers and their soon-to-be-surplus offspring to avoid dying of easily treatable diseases.
The sooner that Mr. Obama starts listening to those sage voices advocating inaction the sooner America gets back on the Right track.
Brian J
@Dork:
Along the same lines, if the Obama administration wants to head off a bank panic or should they need to nationalize or increase savings even more, I suggest they turn the mic over to Megan Fox. Imagine how quickly deposits would rise if she said, seductively, "I just love a man with a high interest savings account."
4tehlulz
@Face:
True. U6 is almost 15%.
The Other Steve
The Market is rallying on this news… Up 65 points! Clearly Rick Santelli approves.
4tehlulz
Here is the link, since I tried to put it in my last post but comments haeted me:
Click here and despair.
Atanarjuat
…and we have yet to reach the bottom of this recession.
These are frightening times, indeed.
-A
The Other Steve
up 140!
This is good news people!
Laura W Darling
So at what point do "discouraged workers" become "despairing workers"?
CalD
Guess a lot of people are about to find out what things were like when I first attempted to enter the job market. Last time around, the middle class never did make up the lost ground or recoup concessions after things started improving again.
The 80’s, which also featured the rise of the cult of the MBA, pretty much spelled the end of single-breadwinner middle class households among other things; a development that our social institutions have yet to fully adapt to, I think. I actually believe that may be one of the reasons no one apparently taught fundamental ethics (not to be confused with morals, which are religiously tinged and often conflicting) or any sort of social responsibility to our current crop of professional business managers. Without that basic glue, any society will devolve into kleptocracy in time.
El Cid
@Brian J: The speed with which you responded to and evaluate my suggestion is dangerously fast. You need to slow down there pal.
El Cid
What happens to a wage deferred?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
When they commit suicide.
As for lowering the capital gains tax, don’t forget to tie that in with eliminating the "death" tax.
Can’t we just force these people to move to a select number of Southern states and let em secede?
Keith
If a cut in the capital gains tax will get all of these people jobs, I bet dropping the death tax will help them get *two* jobs! Twice the stimulus!
Michael
If Erin dropped in and said she wanted me in the worst way for one exciting three day weekend, but that I have to get permission from my missus, I’d actually make the call…..
Dave S.
Capital gains? Eliminating the death tax is obviously the first thing to do.
Also, to paraphrase Barnum, people who took the sunset provisions at face value are born every minute.
Dave S.
Looks like I picked the wrong time to step away from my desk before posting. (shakes fist at 26 and 27)
jrosen
@Comrade Scott
Hear, hear! I suggest an exchange of populations: surely there are milions of sensible people in the South that could change places with our local crazies, bigots
and wingnuts. Then they could stop sending their Michelle Bachmanns, JIm Bunnings, and Richard Shelbys to gum up the Congress with their ignorance, K-LO and her buddies could move down there (and away from me), and Mississippi would no longer take $2.02 from the federal government for every $1.00 they put in. We could actually inspect the peanuts that come over the border for salmonella. Cutting away the backward (in every way) states would no doubt improve things like the infant mortality rate and the divorce rate (which state has the lowest? Massachusetts, that Gomorrah of gay marriage!). I would name the seceded province Rushland and it’s obvious who their president for life should be.
I’m really falling in love with this idea.
Switching gears: Do those who constantly sneer at the unemployed really believe that suddenly millions of hitherto hard-working people suddenly became lazy?
colleeniem
EL CID @ 26:
How about you stop being a racist.
Being white, I can not understand your jargon. This is a big tent blog.
colleeniem
Sorry, at work, messed up my imbeds.
Gus
Don’t laugh too hard at the "eliminating the capital gains" snark. I heard on the radio that Boehner says that this shows that Obama should veto the budget bill.