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美国失业率15年来新高

2009-03-21来源:和谐英语


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240,000 jobs loss last month that brings the total job losses just this year, up to 1.2 million, our unemployment rate now stands at 6.5%. Let's bring cnn Christine Romance, Christine, the highest level since 1994. 
 

That's right. And those jobs loss are so many this year just ten months 1.2 million jobs loss and half of those coming in just past three months. So what that tells us is that there is a rapid deterioration in the economy in the labor market and it's quickening its pace right now in terms of the weakness that we're seeing. Jobs loss pretty much across the board, you got anything related to housing, anything related to the consumer, anything related to finance, losing jobs. The fact that the unemployment rate now stands at 6.5% may make some economists rethink next year's targets. They were talking about 7% maybe 8%, for next year, we are getting there quite quickly with these kinds of numbers every month again and again. 240,000 jobs loss this month, that is, Poppy, um, worse than people expected.

Is there an end to it? Is this the bottom to it?

This isn't the bottom. And I don't think that is a controversial statement. A lot of economists think that we were seeing the beginning of what would become a new norm in the labor market and that would be hundreds of thousands of jobs lost every month. That is what a recession looks like. And this kind of number  this month, told a lot of economists that maybe we are already in that recession. We don't really ever know until after we are in it. There were pockets of strength, government jobs, government jobs increased. You saw health care jobs, and 7000 jobs created in mining. But economists will point out to you that when you got the government creating jobs, consistently creating jobs, that is not a sign of strength. A health care job, some of those are very low paid health jobs and they are replacing highly paid, manufacturing jobs that were supporting middle class families. Some of those health jobs don't have health insurance. They are more like janitorial jobs, home health care jobs. Doctor jobs can't be outsourced, people who run the equipment in hospitals can't be outsourced. Those are good jobs. So people who are worried are looking for choices, for career choices, health care has been a consistent grower. 

You know we've heard, President-elect Barack Obama on the campaign trail saying job creation, job creation, job creation. This makes that call that much more urgent, but that much more difficult as well.

It really does. I think that a lot of people are looking to him to fix it, and to grow jobs. But let's remember that a president doesn't grow jobs, a president with Congress put the policies in place that allow the economy to grow, so the private sector could the private sector can grow jobs. Well a lot of folks are telling me is this is not gonna be a case of the president growing job, this is gonna be a case of the president and his team trying to mitigate what could be a very ugly situation for 2009. There's a lot of talk, Poppy, as well about some sort of depression era public works program.(Right.) You have, just today, Ford announcing more layoffs there. You've got hundreds of thousands of skilled manufacturing workers and construction industry workers who are out of work. And there isn't something coming in, down the pipe to replace those jobs without some sort of retraining. There is talk among a lot of economists that the president and his team should have some sort of big infrastructure spending program to get people to work. The drawback of that is it takes a very long time to start those jobs, but now economists are telling me, if you have a weak job's market for next year, maybe into 2010. Well you don't have to worry about the lag, because you still are gonna  to get those people to work.

Yeah, you have to get them to work, Christine, thank you so much, put again the unemployment right now, 6.5%.