WASHINGTON — Though job losses accelerated last month, the United States has not yet hit bottom.
In a bleak report on Friday, the Labor Department said that almost 600,000 jobs disappeared in January and that a total of 3.6 million jobs had been lost since the beginning of the recession in December 2007. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, rose to 7.6 percent, from 7.2 percent a month earlier.
Losing more than a half million jobs in each of the last three months, the country is trapped in a vortex of plunging consumer demand, rising joblessness and a deepening crisis in the banking system.
The contraction in jobs is already steeper than in any recession since at least the early 1980s. But economists warn that several more shoes are about to drop.
The first is the growing severity of the global recession, which has already started to choke off exports from the United States. Growth in China has slowed to a fraction of its usually brisk pace, leading to brutal downturns in South Korea, Japan and other Asian nations. Much of Europe has slipped into a recession, too.
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.