New York Times: “663,000 Jobs Lost in March; Total Tops 5 Million” and “The U.S. unemployment rate reached 8.5 percent, its highest level in a quarter-century, in a sign of the severity of the downturn.”
Wall Street Journal: “Economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey expect the recession to end in September, though most say it won’t be until the second half of 2010 that the economy recovers enough to bring down unemployment.”
MSN Money: An 8.5% unemployment rate is unmistakably bad. It’s the highest rate since 1983 — a year that saw double-digit unemployment, nearly 30 commercial bank failures and more than 15% of Americans living below the poverty line.
But the real national unemployment rate is far worse than the U.S. Department of Labor’s March figure, announced today, shows. That’s because the official rate doesn’t include the 3.7 million-plus people who are reluctantly working only part time because of the poor labor market. And it doesn’t include the workers who have given up scouring want ads for seemingly nonexistent jobs.
When those folks are added to the numbers, the unemployment rate rises to 15.6%.
FOX: Let’s make a reality show about how scared, poor, and miserable everyone is…it’ll be a huge hit!
Thoughts?! Rants?!