For the first time in four years the economy has lost jobs. Last month the economy lost 17,000 jobs.
The economy lost 17,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department reported on Friday, the first decline in four years and the most striking evidence yet that the United States may be slipping into a recession.
Jobs disappeared across a broad spectrum of professions, with the steepest losses coming in the manufacturing, construction and goods-producing industries.
The unemployment rate, after jumping to 5 percent in December, fell back slightly, to 4.9 percent.
"This is the clearest signal yet that the job market is either in or teetering on a recession," said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
We are on the brink of recession with these January figures. December was better with a gain of gain of 82,000 jobs (revised upward from the the first December estimate of 18,000 jobs). The economy needs about 150,000 new jobs monthly just to keep pace with population growth so even December's numbers were not strong enough. Hopefully, the economy can turn around enough to avert a recession. We don't want to see continuous months of negative job growth in 2008.
