Friday, 6 March 2009

Terrible US employment numbers

The February US non farm payroll numbers were nasty. The US economy shed over 650,000 jobs. Since January last year, almost 4.4 million jobs have been lost.

The chart above might give the impression that February was slightly better than Janunary. Not so; there 28 days in February; 31 in January. The next chart illustrates the average daily job losses per month.

In February, the daily job loss rate was 23,000 compared to 21,000 in January.

Unemployment in the US has surged to 8.1 percent, hitting its highest rate since 1983.


Anonymous said...

8.1 % - wow

Anonymous said...

Thats just the U3 figure isn't it? I imagine the U6 is a *lot* higher

Phill Tomlinson said...

These are swindled stats and in reality it is much higher than this. When it gets to around 12% - 15% then we are in Great Depression territory as the stats were not manipulated back than like now despite it being around 25-30% back then.