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Jobless rate hits 5-year high

Seen as signal of a recession

By Patrice Hill (Contact) | Saturday, September 6, 2008

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The nation's unemployment rate surged last month from 5.7 percent to 6.1 percent, a five-year high, as nearly every sector of the economy shed jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Businesses laid off another 84,000 workers, bringing the total number of jobs that disappeared so far this year to 605,000. Manufacturing was particularly hard hit, with the loss of 61,000 jobs despite strong demand for U.S.-made goods overseas. The foundering auto industry alone accounted for 39,000 lost jobs.

The drumbeat of monthly job losses has lifted the unemployment rate by 1.3 percentage points in the past six months — an extraordinarily rapid rise that economists say is a strong signal of recession. The last time joblessness rose so fast was in 1993 during the "jobless recovery" from the 1990-1991 recession.

While the Boston academic committee that is the arbiter of recessions in the U.S. has not officially declared one, Harm Bandholz, chief economist at UniCredit Markets, is one of many economists who believe a downturn may have already begun.

"The sharp rise in the unemployment rate over the past six months translates into a recession probability of 70 percent, which is higher than in the 1990-91 and 2001" recessions, he said.

Worries that the economy and job market are deteriorating prompted a global rout in stocks the past two days, starting with a 344-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday on news of a rise in jobless claims that foreshadowed Friday's jump in unemployment.

Friday, U.S. stock indexes steadied as investors had anticipated most of the bad employment news. The Dow gained 33 points to close at 11,221.

A few economists were somewhat skeptical of the sudden and unusual rise in unemployment reported by households since this past spring, which seems at odds with the steady but unspectacular trickle of job losses reported by businesses in a separate Labor Department survey.

Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital, called it a "puzzle" because much of the rise in joblessness has been the result of 2 million people coming into the labor force at a time when jobs have become scarce.

"Why are so many more people looking for work when work is getting tougher to find?" he asked. "One suspicion is that the unusual combination of a weak economy and accelerating inflation has damaged household finances by more than would be the case if inflation were tame, making workers more desperate to find work to make ends meet."