The Labor Department reported today that June saw the sixth straight month of job losses in America:
Employers trimmed jobs from their payrolls in June for the sixth straight month, as the government’s closely watched report Thursday showed continued weakness in the labor market.
The Labor Department reported a net loss of 62,000 jobs in the month. That matched the job loss figure for May, which was revised higher from 49,000. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 60,000 jobs.
In the same month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 10.2% — the biggest June loss for the index since the Great Depression:
The U.S. stock market has lost $2.1 trillion in value this year — $1.4 trillion in June alone, says Dow Jones Indexes. “Talk about a tough month,” says Sam Stovall, chief strategist at Standard & Poor’s.
Wall Street is debating whether the market has now priced in the bulk of the bad economic news. Bob Doll, chief investment officer at BlackRock, said Monday he believes the market is past the worst and should “grind higher” the rest of the year.
The Bush Economy: everybody’s a loser.
UPDATE (3:15PM): Dean Baker at TPMCafe:
The economy has entered a slow motion recession. It is not seeing the dramatic plunges in jobs that characterized prior recessions, but the collapse of the housing bubble is slowly sinking more and more sectors of the economy.
Total private sector job gains in the Bush years may fall below 3 million by November. The annual average for the Clinton years was 2.6 million.
