PRESS RELEASE
New Government Job Figures Paint Depression Picture
April 4, 2008 (EIRNS)—The collapsing U.S. economy has now eliminated 232,000 jobs, net, in the first quarter of 2008, according to official government statistical releases, with 80,000 of them disappearing in March, marked by large-scale layoffs of temporary workers and massive disappearance of productive, better-paying employment.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' surveys, about 93,000 goods-producing jobs were lost in March, making a net 649,000 productive jobs lost in the past 12 months, at an accelerating rate; of those, 51,000 construction jobs lost in March makes 1,000,000 lost since the July 2006 construction "boom" peak; 48,000 manufacturing jobs lost in March makes 310,000 eliminated in the past year; and 24,000 jobs lost in the auto/machine-tool sector alone in March makes 86,000 eliminated in a year.
An approximate measure of real unemployment currently, is not the 5.1% which caused all the public groaning today, but 9.5%, or 14.1 million using the BLS' own figures: 7.8 million unemployed, plus 4.9 million forced to work part-time, plus 1.4 million dropped out of the labor force in discouragement.
Since the 1998 LTCM/Russian bonds crisis and the blocking of President Clinton's intended move to a "new financial architecture," at that time, the U.S. economy has lost a net 4 million (24%) of its manufacturing jobs, by BLS records. During the Cheney-Bush White House regime, 403,000 (30%) of all auto/machine-tool sector jobs have been lost.
