Over a quarter of a million jobs go in the US in September
In the US 263,000 jobs were lost in September, which was higher than experts had been predicting. The unemployment rate was the highest since 1983, upto of 9.8% from August’s figure of 9.7%. The number of people in work in the US has fallen every month for the last 21 months.
This has also forced economists to rethink just when they think the US economy will recover. Although growth has been evident in the last three months, as in the UK, unemployment seems to continue to rise even after the actual “recession” has finished.
In December 2007, there was 7.6 million out of work in the US, this has now risen to to 15.1 million. Much of the growth has been driven by government stimulus, but it seems that the private sector has seen little signs of activity. The sectors with the highest levels of unemployment are construction, manufacturing and retail.