unemployment

businessweek.com — Financial markets were expecting the U.S. economy to shed jobs in the August employment report, released Sept. 5, but a big jump in the U.S. unemployment rate took Wall Street by surprise. The weaker-than-expected data for August suggest the U.S. economy is headed for recession and puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower rates rather than raise them, as the Fed has indicated it wants to do. The unemployment rate jumped 0.4 percentage points to 6.1% in August. Even worse for the labor market, June's 51,000 decline was revised to — 100,000, for a net — 58,000 revision over the prior two months.

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nytimes.com — Getting a job in George W. Bush's economy was already hard for a lot of people, but in the last few months it has gotten dramatically worse. All over the country, there are stories of people who are doing all of the right things, but still can't get a decent job.

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cnbc.com — For the first time in nearly 4-1/2 years, U.S. payrolls shrank as continuing losses in construction and manufacturing reflected the economy's waning momentum. The Labor Department also lowered some job growth estimates from previous months.

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