News, Unemployment soars to 8.5 pct.; 13 million jobless. (highest, collecting, unemployed)

[John1960]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment zoomed to 8.5 percent last month, the highest in a quarter-century, as employers axed 663,000 more workers and pushed the nation's jobless ranks past 13 million. The hard times were only expected to get harder -- a painful 10 percent jobless rate before long.

Unemployment soars to 8.5 pct.; 13 million jobless - Yahoo! Finance

[Jesse69]

What a bunch of idiots we have running corporations and America! We shouldn't cut employment to make companies "Leaner and Meaner" too much - as then these unemployed people are part of the consumer base that supports the economy! Their employment will make the economy better!

[desertsun41]

And yet there are still some people calling this a recession. By any respected definition of the word "depression" we are well into it. This useless govt will never admit it though.

In fact whatever number the lying govt reports you can safely double it to get a true factual number.

[gardener34]

Yep and the utter stupidity of letting in H1B visas to do jobs that many americans are perfectly qualified to do - and give the corps tax breaks to do it... really really unbelievable. And to be told that we really don't understand and we want to be globally competitive. I want to barf.

[Art Lover]

I heard the other day on the news that it's really 15% if we count those NOT collecting unemployment, which they said is the highest it's been in 27 years.

[ihatetucson]

Originally Posted by desertsun41

And yet there are still some people calling this a recession. By any respected definition of the word "depression" we are well into it. This useless govt will never admit it though.

In fact whatever number the lying govt reports you can safely double it to get a true factual number.

You took the words right out of my mouth. We are in a depression, not necessarily a "great" depression, but a depression nontheless.

[grapico]

Originally Posted by Art Lover

I heard the other day on the news that it's really 15% if we count those NOT collecting unemployment, which they said is the highest it's been in 27 years.

Yeah by Florida law since I quit my job to go on an out of country trip, I was one of those "unemployed" but not collecting and looking... so was my gf... so are quite a few of my friends...And how about the health care crisis that might hit soon??? Is it counted as unemployed if your company offers u *no* benefits? Or if your company refuses to let you work full time and you are only an hour below full time work? etc. etc.

I think there is a LOT more people who want to be fully employed that aren't that those numbers don't show.

Originally Posted by gardener34

Yep and the utter stupidity of letting in H1B visas to do jobs that many americans are perfectly qualified to do - and give the corps tax breaks to do it... really really unbelievable. And to be told that we really don't understand and we want to be globally competitive. I want to barf.

There is no point being a unified sovereign country if we are going to let people coming over here working from other countries while we see unemployment # skyrocket... I have seen IT depts FILLED with h1b's. If they want to do this, then they need to cut off the IRS...one or the other. I didn't work my whole life, educated myself at the universities to pay for an education here, and pay tax into the system my whole life just to get screwed....

[annerk]

I agree with grapico that we need to stop handing out Visa's to every person from wherever who wants to come here when we have such high unemployment. We should also stop renewing the Visa's of those already here.