The Recession Is Still in Full Swing

So much for the so called green shots. Rumors of the economic recovery were greatly exaggerated. The month of June was another terrible month for jobs.

Employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent, the government said on Thursday in a report that showed a labor market continuing to struggle with a deep
recession.

The June job losses were more than 100,000 greater than the 363,000 consensus of Wall Street economists polled by Reuters and broke a four-month trend of moderation in job losses.

The Labor Department data showed that in April and May, 8,000 fewer jobs were lost than previously reported. The May job losses were revised downward to 322,000, while the April losses were revised upward to 519,000

.

Starting February, the rate of job losses began to decrease. That seemed to come to a head when, in May, job losses dropped to 350,000. Given that January saw over 700,000, that was a marked improvement.

That all changed again in June. With job losses at 467,000, the job losses are increasing again. That means that any claim that the economy is bottoming out has been greatly exaggerated. Not only are the raw numbers awful but they are no longer improving. As such, the idea that the economy is bottoming out has just had cold water thrown on it.

Once again, we have a disparity in job losses and unemployment rate. This time job losses were much worse than expected while the unemployment rate grew by only .1%. So far, there's been no explanation of this.

The bottom line here is that the recession is in full swing and rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.