JOB PROSPECTS - AT 10:23 A.M. ET: 

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. may suffer further job losses in the coming months after employers cut payrolls by 633,000 in March and the unemployment rate jumped to a 25-year high of 8.5 percent.

A host of companies -- from manufacturers such as Johnson Controls Inc. and Dana Holding Corp. to service providers like International Business Machines Corp. and even the U.S. Postal Service -- have announced plans to eliminate jobs in the face of depressed demand from their customers.

“We expect labor-market conditions to remain appalling for many months to come,” Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. in New York, wrote in a client note following yesterday’s report from the Labor Department.

COMMENT:  This is the real economy, and far more important than stock market reports.  We are nowhere near the unemployment high of 25% during the worst of the great Depression, but we could conceivably reach almost half of that later this year.  The country could hobble along at that rate, but the economy would be chronically soft and vulnerable, which is what has happened in several European countries.

April 5, 2009   Permalink