Blog - Unemployment at 5-Year High

Some bad news related to the two most-viewed bills on OpenCongress – H.R.5749 and S.2544, via the AP:

>The nation’s unemployment rate bolted above the psychologically important 6 percent level last month for the first time in five years — and it’s likely to go even higher in the months ahead, possibly throwing the economy into a tailspin as Americans pick a new president.
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>A blizzard of pink slips propelled the jobless rate from 5.7 percent in July to 6.1 percent in August, the Labor Department reported Friday. Such a sharp increase is usually a strong recession warning, and it dashed investors’ hopes for a late-year recovery.
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>Worried about the economy and their own business prospects, employers cut payrolls by 84,000 in August, marking the eighth straight month of losses.
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>So far this year, a staggering 605,000 jobs have vanished — slightly less than the population of Alaska. The economy needs to generate more than 100,000 new jobs a month for employment to remain stable.

If it goes up another .3 percent, we’ll hit the next landmark – the highest rate of unemployment since 1994.