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Employers Slash Jobs by Most in Five Years

Employers Slash Jobs by Most in Five Years
March 7th, 2008

Via: AP:

Employers slashed jobs by 63,000 in February, the most in five years, the starkest sign yet the country is heading dangerously toward recession or is in one already.

The Labor Department’s report, released Friday, also showed that the nation’s unemployment rate dipped to 4.8 percent as hundreds of thousands of people — perhaps discouraged by their prospects — left the civilian labor force. The jobless rate was 4.9 percent in January.

Job losses were widespread, with hefty cuts coming from construction, manufacturing, retailing, financial services and a variety of professional and business services. Those losses swamped gains elsewhere including education and health care, leisure and hospitality, and the government.

The latest snapshot of the nation’s employment climate underscored the heavy toll of the housing and credit crises on companies, jobseekers and the overall economy.

To provide relief to persistent credit problems, the Federal Reserve announced Friday additional steps to inject cash into the nation’s financial system to keep banks lending to customers.

The central bank will increase the amount of loans it will auction to banks on March 10 and March 24 to $50 billion each, up from the $30 billion apiece originally planned.

The Fed also said that starting Friday it will enlarge another series of transactions, called repurchase agreements, so that they will pump a net total of $100 billion into the financial system at any one time.

The Labor report also showed that the job losses suffered in January were worse than the government first reported. Employers cut 22,000 jobs, versus 17,000.

It was the first monthly back-to-back job losses since May and June 2003, when the job market was still struggling to recover from the blows of the 2001 recession.

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