Job Losses Continue; Someone Tell Chris Shays

by: CaptCT

Fri Oct 03, 2008 at 14:59:49 PM EDT

"The unemployment rate is likely to cross 7.0 percent early in 2009."

The economy lost jobs for the ninth consecutive month in September, with the pace accelerating to 159,000 jobs. This was the largest one-month fall since March of 2003 when the economy lost 212,000 jobs. ...

The U-6 index, which is a broad measure of labor market slack including underemployed and discouraged workers, hit 11.0 percent, the highest level since April of 1994. ...

Job loss was sharpest in manufacturing, where employment fell by 51,000 in September, and is now down by 442,000 from its year ago level. ...

This report should remove any lingering doubts that the economy is in a recession.

Chris Shays (Sept 1, 2008):

"Our economy is fundamentally strong. No one can disagree with that."

Warren Buffet, disagreeing:

[T]he U.S. economy is "flat on the floor"' after a cardiac arrest as companies struggle to secure funding and unemployment increases.

"In my adult lifetime I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful, economically, as they are now," Buffett said today in an interview with Charlie Rose to be broadcast tonight on PBS. "The economy is going to be getting worse for a while." ...The credit freeze is "sucking blood'' from the U.S. economy.