More Trouble For Sluggish National Economy
AMERICA’S JOBLESS RATE HITS THREE-AND-A-HALF YEAR HIGH
FITSNews – June 6, 2008 – Ten days after it was announced that U.S. consumer confidence had reached a 16-year low, our country’s jobless rate has now hit a three-and-a-half year high. Unemployment for the month of May rose from 5.0 to 5.5 percent, according to Reuters:
Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters forecast that 58,000 jobs would be lost in May, but had foreseen the unemployment rate rising only to 5.1 percent. So far in 2008, job losses have totaled 324,000, the department said.
“The data definitely points to the fact that this economy is struggling to grow,” said Owen Fitzpatrick, head of U.S. equity group at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management in New York.
Funny, Wall Street analysts surveyed by FITSNews said the exact same thing! Of course they also asked us for more pictures of Salma Hayek.
Look, in case it’s not clear at this point America is in the economic wilderness, people, and neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has offered anything resembling a plan to get it back on track.
Comments
By Silence Dogood on June 6th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Not to mention this is one of the biggest month to month increases in the jobless rate (percentage wise) in a couple of decades.
I for one however agree with most talk show radio hosts and think this is a partisan issue and if you think the economy is bad or getting worse it is because you are a doom and gloom Democrat and if you think ecomony is great and getting better everday it is because you are a patriotic Republican…could there be any other explanation?
By smarty on June 7th, 2008 at 11:21 am
and SC’s unemployment rate is still higher than that… Because Marshall Sanford has not gotten the word from his wife to do anything about. Maybe he’ll pen anothe r”opinion” piece to The State.
By Monkeydarts on June 8th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Not to rain sunshine on the gloom, but the unemployment rate jump was entirely due to the way the DOL computes the seasonal adjustments for 16-24 year olds/ summer jobs. People assume these stats are raw numbers– they aren’t, they are “adjusted” (AKA fudged, molded, extrapolated and given the ol’ SWAG). Expect a “smoothing” of the numbers in 30, 60 & 90 days. Now back to the end of life as we know it.