Read More of the Same Day's Blog

Gloom enveloped the labor market for the third straight month. December and January and now February saw job monthly job losses in excess of 600,000. The unemployment rate now stands at 8.1%, the worst since 1983. Add in those who want full-time jobs yet have to work part time and those who have left the labor force because they are discouraged by a lack of prospects, and the underemployment rate is 14.8%. Since the recession started in November 2007, 4.4m jobs have disappeared from the labor market. There are now 12.5m unemployed nationwide. This depressing Story of the Day was the lead on all three newscasts.

"This is what a freefall looks like," exclaimed CBS' Anthony Mason, calculating that this is the worst three months in the labor market since 1939. ABC's Betsy Stark extrapolated from the last six months to project a 10% unemployment rate by June, 12% by December: "We are in the teeth of this thing." On NBC, Mara Schiavocampo pointed out that men have been hurt disproportionately by this recession, since more layoffs have occurred in male-dominated construction and manufacturing while female-friendly education and healthcare have been more stable. "Because of that imbalance women are poised to surpass men in the workforce for the first time in history."

"It is the government that is going to have to pull us out of this recession," CBS' Mason concluded, since businesses have stopped hiring. CBS, accordingly, dispatched Jeff Glor and Ben Tracy to look at the job prospects arising from fiscal stimulus. Tracy visited a healthcare clinic treating the working poor of Los Angeles. There he found that a federal $1.3m check will not hire any new staff but it will save the jobs of ten of the 20 workers that were recently laid off. Glor was in Philadelphia where $191m in federal mass transit funds will find work for 5,000.

NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd followed Barack Obama to Ohio, where the President gave credit to the stimulus for putting 25 new cops on the beat in Columbus. The plan "did not create these jobs it saved them," Todd pointed out. "Without the money these folks would be looking for a new line of work." Just 12,499,975 more slots to fill.


Andrew Tyndall 3/18/09 9:36:13 pm

© 2010 Tyndall Report