(Political Animal) MORE JOB LOSSES....Oil prices keep rising, automobile sales have cratered, the credit markets look perilously close to going into crisis again, the service sector shrunk in June, and today the Labor Department announced job losses for the sixth month in a row:

Nonfarm payrolls fell by 62,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. May payrolls also retreated by 62,000 jobs, representing an revision from the initial estimate of 49,000. April was revised to a decline of 67,000, versus the 28,000 previously reported.

...."Labor market weakness persisted in June," said Keith Hall, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Non-farm payroll employment continued to trend down and has fallen by 438,000 in the first half of the year, an average of 73,000 per month."

The unemployment rate stayed the same, however. You only get counted as unemployed if you're actively looking for a job, and more and more people are just giving up. We may or may not technically be in a recession, but it sure feels an awful lot like one.

Copyright 2008

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