The long awaited employment report for February was just released and the news, as it has been for over a year now, was not good. More than 650,000 jobs were lost during the month, pushing the national unemployment rate to 8.1%. The last time we had an unemployment rate this high was in 1983, and the job losses are showing no signs of slowing down. Economists had expected unemployment to increase to only 7.9%.

Adding to the bad news, the jobless numbers for December and January were revised to show an additional 163,000 job losses over those two months. Since the recession started 15 months ago, just under than 4.4 million jobs have been lost. Over 75% of those job losses have happened during the last six months alone. This number doesn’t account for the millions more who are considered underemployed-workers who have seen their hours reduced and those unable to find full time employment.

It’s beginning to sound like a broken record, month after month bearing bad news in the job market. It’s hard to imagine a month where the economy actually adds jobs happening anytime soon. The job losses were widespread and not isolated to just the financial and construction industry, though much of the bad news comes from those sectors. Healthcare and government jobs were the only areas to see increases, and those upward moves were very modest.

One of the biggest worries about job losses is that consumer spending is going to have a hard time recovering with so many people out of work. With corporate earnings significantly lower than they were a year ago, companies are desperate for the consumer to return to a position of strength and confidence. The higher unemployment numbers lead to problems in the housing and financial markets, with falling home values and mortgage foreclosures making it nearly impossible for banks to dig themselves out of the deep hole they’re in.

In an economy desperate for good news, this news is confirming fears that the economy is likely to get much worse before it gets better.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: economy, foreclosures, recession, unemployment

• Credit Card Numbers Improve In Spite Of Rising Default Expectations
• Record Job Losses in January
• Groups That Benefit From New Stimulus Legislation
• 2008 Losses: The Real Numbers
• Five Signs of Continuing Weakness in the Economy
• Is The FDIC In Trouble?
• Foreclosures Soar In April
• Some Stress Test Results Revealed