Tech & Biz

US Unemployment Could reach 9% in 2009

by Jordan Yerman | February 8, 2009 at 10:35 am

517 views | 25 Recommendations | 4 comments

598,000 jobs were lost in January, and, according to projections, that's not the end of the bad news. Indeed, even a successful stimulus package would be unlikely to turn around the downward trend until late in 2009, with US unemployment possibly reaching as high as 9%.

The amount of Americans out of work will probably grow. The labor market lags behind economic output, and with the U.S. economy widely expected to contract in the first half of the year, the unemployment rate could reach 9.0%. Even with the best-case scenario of an economic turnaround in the second half of 2009, the labor market wouldn't see an improvement at least until the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Congress continues to hammer away at the stimulus package:

A group of moderate Senate Democrats with a few Republicans agreed to slash roughly 12 percent from the $937 billion (634 billion pound) package, which Democrats had hoped would usher in new spending for projects ranging from health care to education.

To reach that deal -- pegged at about $827 billion -- $40 billion in aid to states was nixed as was $16 billion for school construction, among other spending. But it still differs from the $819 billion bill that passed the House on January 28.

The differences will have to be ironed out in negotiations between the two chambers.

Be sure to check out Politisite's coverage of the stimulus package process.

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158

at 13:08 on February 8th, 2009

Thanks for this important information.

Those are scary statistics.

Uwe Paschen

at 16:16 on February 8th, 2009

10% would be the beginning of major trouble....

Camera Capers

at 21:08 on February 8th, 2009

I was moved to see that the local movie was letting jobless people in for free. I always have my camera with me, so I snapped the shot. And again when the movie changed, the offer was still up.

Camera Capers has contributed a photo to this story.

unemploymentality

at 15:09 on March 1st, 2009

I took this picture of my niece, Daisy, for an article I wrote for Unemploymentality.com about people in your neighborhood that are a lot like unemployed people. Kids fit this descriptio, so do holly rollers, old people, freelancers and do-gooders.

unemploymentality has contributed a photo to this story.