Oh well…so much for "supply-side" economics.

With the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation’s employers shed 533,000 jobs in November, the 11th consecutive monthly decline, the government reported Friday morning, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent. The decline, the largest one-month loss since December 1974, was fresh evidence that the economic contraction accelerated in November, promising to make the current recession, already 12 months old, the longest since the Great Depression. The previous record was 16 months, in the severe recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. “We have gone from recession into something that looks more like collapse,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief domestic economist at High Frequency Economics, referring to the accelerating job losses in recent months. The so-called underemployment rate... jumped to 12.5 percent, from 8 percent in October. Most of the underemployed are people working part time who want to work full time but cannot. The 12.5 percent is the highest level of underemployment since the statistic was first compiled in 1994. Even retail sales in the Christmas season were off sharply. The International Council of Shopping Centers on Thursday described November sales at stores open at least a year as the weakest in more than 30 years. Source: "Jobless Rate Soars to 6.7% in November" By LOUIS UCHITELLE - NY Times - December 5, 2008

Source: The Washington Monthly, March 8, 2009 via MoveOn

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