Duck and cover: pink slips fall (again)
Ouch! On the heels of relatively decent October unemployment numbers for Orange and Chatham counties comes a bombshell: American businesses pink-slipped 533,000 folks in November, driving the nation’s unemployment rate to 6.7 percent. And remember, these numbers will likely be revised in the coming weeks. So don’t be surprised if it’s even worse than we thought.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the figures this morning and the stock market immediately reacted. By noon, the Associated Press was reporting that all major indexes had declined more than 1 percent, and the Dow dropped 162 points.
By all indications, this is going to be long, bumpy ride. Experts say we could easily see 7 percent by year-end, since AT&T announced it was slashing 12,000 jobs and DuPont and Avis/Budget said they’d jettison 2000+ positions. And there’s already talk of 9 percent unemployment by the end of next year. Not only would that mean more than a year of continued job losses, but it would be the highest unemployment rate since the 1980s.
A few more quarters like this, and it could start feeling a lot like 1974.
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