Retail sector hit hard by job cuts

Expect payrolls to grow from the private sector?

While on the subject of unemployment figures, over at Will Rahal Financial blog. In his article Unemployment Threshhold he makes and interesting argument. He provides a table that contains the number of months INTO RECESSION needed to approximate the current (6%) level in the year-on-year percent change in the unemployment rate.

Using unemployment data starting in Nov 1948 and ending in Mar 2001, his average is 3 months. He concludes:

That retail employment usually spikes in December, as stores (like Staples, where I used to be a manager) hire temporary employees to cover the holiday rush.

The fact that this number was this bad, in this sector, at this time of year, should be doubly troubling.

lie about labor statistics.

Can you imagine how awful the jobless rate would be if they'd been telling the truth these past seven years?

and jobs in box stores. That's a great economy?

one was a high-level construction guy, and his wife was a health-care professional. Now he's doing handyman work and she's cleaning houses.

Look at that economy go.

On November 26, 2001, the The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced that a recession had begun in March 2001.

since there can be no recovery. Globalization bring unemployment and poor products...services. There is no over sight of the food we eat from foreign countries, etc. Lead in our children's toys. Good grief no one is watching the country in Congress.

Many jobs are gone off-shore, etc. College graduates can't pay off their loans because they can't find jobs which pay enough.

Our small town which was booming now has two boxes stores and numerous others...food chains empty. A nearby town which built a new mall has empty stores which they can't fill. I warned our town of over building if there is a slow down but they won't listen. Now with the loss of tax funds, they are going to raise ours. Yet...they continue to build multi-story cheap housing. Which remains empty.

Does anyone think the bank de-regulation was a good idea? There is fraud and greed without over sight. The Savings & Loan payoff made the Republican South (and Texas) rich which is why we have a financial crisis right now. They are the same crooks.

A new direction is need not just "hope".

I keep reading all this recession talk,but I believe you hit it right on.

This isn't like other recessions since there can be no recovery.

Can't keep sending jobs out of the country without it eventually having a devastating affect on the economy. Where were the damn economists for the last 26 years?