Conditions for the nation's workers deteriorated last month at an unrelenting pace, new data showed yesterday, adding urgency to the Obama administration's calls for aggressive action to curb job losses and bolster the economy.
The White House has been working on parallel tracks to arrest the economic free fall. While building support for a massive stimulus package, which cleared a crucial hurdle in the Senate last night, the administration has also been cobbling together a rescue plan for the financial system, which the Treasury Department is scheduled to unveil Monday.
Both efforts are designed to improve the nation's employment outlook, by directly creating jobs in the case of stimulus and, in the case of the financial rescue, by steadying the banks that would ordinarily lend to employers seeking to expand.
The need for progress on those fronts seemed more important than ever yesterday, as the Labor Department announced that conditions worsened more than expected last month. The nation's employers shed 598,000 jobs, the most since 1974, driving the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent from 7.2 percent. If the jobless rate keeps rising at the pace it has for the past two months, it will hit double digits in summer and reach its highest rate since the Great Depression by the fall.
Despite the grim data, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 2.7 percent, or 217.52 points, on anticipation that the Senate would pass the economic stimulus package.
Since the recession began in December 2007, the nation has lost more jobs as a percentage of the labor force than it had at a comparable point in the early 1980s downturn, the worst recession of the post-World War II era. The number of unemployed Americans over the past year has risen by about 4.1 million, equivalent to the entire labor force of Virginia.
"It is almost set in stone now that this will be the worst job market we've seen in the postwar period," said Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo.
Companies in nearly every sector of the economy have cut jobs or announced that they would take other steps to save on costs, including freezing or reducing pay or eliminating contributions to employee retirement programs. Yesterday, Emerson Electric, a global manufacturing and technology company based in St. Louis, became the latest firm to disclose cutbacks, saying it would slash up to 14,000 jobs this year because of lower demand.
President Obama seized on yesterday's dismal news, as he has with other bleak data lately, to press for passage of the economic stimulus package.
"This is not some abstract debate," Obama said at the White House. "It is an urgent and growing crisis that can only be fully understood through the unseen stories that lie underneath each and every one of those 600,000 jobs that were lost this month."
The financial rescue package that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner plans to lay out next week would aim to save or create jobs by propping up banks and other troubled financial institutions, which in turn should make them able to lend money to businesses that seek to expand or consumers who wish to make purchases. The stimulus package, a mix of tax cuts and new spending, seeks to save or create jobs directly by encouraging retail sales and business investment.
Many of those jobs would probably be concentrated in the manufacturing industry. According to an estimate by economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, who has been advising congressional Democrats, an earlier version of the stimulus similar to the package that passed the House of Representatives last month would generate 590,000 manufacturing jobs by the end of 2012. Last month alone, the nation lost 207,000 manufacturing jobs, the largest one-month decline since 1982. Most of those losses were concentrated in companies that make vehicles or related parts and machinery.
As a result of the ongoing global financial crisis of 2008–2009, American employers have cut 598,000 jobs over the past month, the most in one month since December 1974. The unemployment rate also rose approximately 0.4 percent, bringing the rate up to 7.6 percent (11.6 million people), the highest since January 1992. This is according to the United States Labor Department's monthly unemployment report released last week.

US President Barack Obama asked Congress today to support and quickly pass a $900 billion economic stimulus package that would, according to some, help create more jobs and decrease the unemployment rate. "All of us in Washington must remember that we’re here to work for the American people. And if we drag our feet and fail to act, this crisis will turn into a catastrophe," said Obama in a statement this morning. 

Obama warned that the rate could grow to double digits if Congress did not act fast and pass the bill allowing the package, and stated that the report was "very troubling."

"These numbers demand action. It is time for Congress to act," he also said, "That's 3.6 million Americans who need our help," he stated, referring to the number of American workers that had been laid off since the United States officially entered economic recession in December 2007.

Factories have been hit the hardest in the past month, laying off 207,000 workers, approximately 20 percent of the month's layoffs and the most by the industry since 1982. The next highest was the construction industry, which cut an estimated 110,000 workers last month. Other hard-hit industries include the financial industries, cutting 42,000 jobs, the retail industry, which cut 46,000, and leisure and hospitality, losing 28,000 workers.

"This is a horror show we’re watching. By every measure available - loss of employment and hours, rise of unemployment, shrinkage of the employment to population rate - this recession is steeper than any recession of the last 40 years, including the harsh recession of the early 1980s," stated Lawrence Mishel, an economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a US-based research organization focused on the economy. Economic forecasters reported that their predictions had actually been less severe than the report stated.

The United States Congress is currently debating a $900 billion economic stimulus bill that will attempt to halt the recession, and will continue to do so until a measure has been reached.