Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Jobapalooza

ADP's monthly numbers on job losses in the private sector for February are nothing short of staggering: an estimated 697,000 jobs lost last month despite the fact that February's announced layoffs were down somewhat from January's numbers.

If the official job loss numbers on Friday are anywhere close to that 700k mark however, we're in dire, dire trouble. A while ago I threw out an insane number of 10 million jobs lost in 2009 as worst case scenario. That's still waaaaaaaaaay high, but if we're losing a good 1.35 million jobs every 2 months here, 8 million jobs down in 2009 are certainly not out of the picture if this keeps up. Should the pace accelerate more, well...maybe I'm not so insane after all.

2 comments:

  1. No, you're insane. It's just that the rest of the world has fallen into insanity with you.

    Seriously, though, if the really really scary numbers are starting to come true, one thinks tht we might want to worry.

    I don't think Obama will be able to prevent a disaster anymore, but here's hoping he can blunt a significant part of the it.

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  2. Blunting it is all we can hope for, long enough so we can recover in the next couple of years, rather than it being a fatal blow.

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