Lost 162,000 jobs last Quarter.

There have been several major layoff announcements in the last week.

This Quarter and next Quarter are more or less "Layoff Season" for employers, things could easily change.

I won't even get into the fact that this is the first time in history that this country emerged from a recession and didn't have immediate and strong job growth.

Or the fact that so many jobs have been lost that we're basically in a situation where they aren't that much more to lose, many people have given up on looking for work (effectively removing them from Unemployment statistics) people who have been employed so long that their benefits have ran out, despite multiple extensions, etc.

Or the fact that the predicted job growth in terms of creation of jobs hasn't happened yet.

If we're still losing jobs on the regular and new jobs aren't being created, the fact that initial unemployment claims have gone down is irrelevant.

If you have a local economy, with a workforce of 100,000 people and 30,000 people are laid off one year, 25,0000 the 2nd year, 15,000 the third year and then 5,000 the fourth year, leaving a workforce of only 25,000 with jobs and crushing the local economy as the number of employed people droppped by 75%, the fact that initial unemployment claims has dropped by 83% in the 4th year, doesn't change the state of your local economy or neccessarily mean things are getting better - if you're not creating new jobs for the 70,000 people laid off in the previous years and none of them are working.

In each year the number of initial jobless claims falls, BUT the economy is steadily getting worse since it's not creating jobs for the previously unemployed.

That's the situation this country is in now.





Peace,









M2