Don Kenobi
/ 83.5.82.* / 2009-05-09 02:56
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in April (-539,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.5 to 8.9 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost. In April, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries. Overall, private-sector employment fell by 611,000.
The total number of unemployed rose to the highest recorded since the BLS began producing these figures - more than 40 years ago - surpassing all previous post-WWII recessions.
The only buffer to the job loss was temporary hiring by government for the Census, which was considerable. Without that there would have been real trouble in the jobs report. That hiring will continue for a while, but those are not permanent positions and in addition they're something that comes every 10 years then then goes.