Leading Rich

The news on the street is that there is a compromise and the Senate is ready to vote on a smaller $780 Billion package for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 .  But I think this is hogwash.  So far no one has been able to compromise and get the American recovery on its way.  So the stock market ended up higher today, but in the end what do we have?  More Unemployment!!!  Did you check out the latest unemployment figures?

598,000 Jobs were lost in January.  So looking at the figures over 3 Million jobs have been lost since the recession started in December 2007.

When will it all end?  I think we have another year or two more to go in terms of hardship.  Could the new definition of depression mean 9% unemployment?  Already there are states that have higher unemployment rates than the national rate, such as California with 9.3% in December 2008.  In some parts of California there are rates as high as 10.4% for the Inland Empire.

source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Are more people are unemployed now than in the depression.  Currently there are 11.6 million unemployed people in the United States from a labor pool of 153.7 million.  In 1933 24.9% of 11.4 million people were unemployed, that is 2.85 million people.  Right now the entire workforce from 1933 is unemployed.  I think we just may be in a depression.

Check back later as I will post the employment rates for 33 states during the weekend.