Home  News Local News Job losses continue
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Friday, 11 July 2008 |
According to reports from the U.S. Labor Department 62,000 additional jobs were lost across the nation in June. This is the sixth straight month that Americans have lost jobs which now total over 400,000 jobs lost since January. There are no signs that unemployment will ease any time soon.
With just 10 days into July, several companies including, national airlines like Miramar, Florida, based Spirit Airlines, have announced pending layoffs, and layoffs have also been announced in media and car manufacturing companies and in the area of education.
Chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, Mark Zandi expects another 400,000 jobs will be lost in the second half of the year.
Officially, the national unemployment rate remained steady at 5.5 percent, but the indicators pointed out that the rate was higher for young workers, mostly college graduates, which suggests that these new job seekers are faced with a weaker labor market than in the past. Job losses were greatest in the construction, financial and retail sectors, while, on the other hand, people were finding jobs with the government and in healthcare. According to Zandi, job losses are occurring over half of the states in the country recording the biggest losses occurring in California, Florida, Michigan and Ohio.
Despite the continued rate of job losses the government does not associate this with a recession. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in a statement that although the job losses are disappointing they are still far from the loss of $180,000 jobs per month in 2001 when the country experienced a slight recession. Unlike Zandi, Gutierrez believes that the second half of the year will see an improvement in job losses, especially as the government rebate checks boost consumption, and stimulate businesses.
Democratic candidate Barack Obama sees the jobs losses in the first half of the year as a result of the failed economic policies of the past eight years, while Republican John McCain’s opinion is that to get the economy back on track there needs to be a job-first economic plan.
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