They Took our Jobs!

Even though a surprise fall was announced today and the unemployment rate fell unexpectedly in January to 9.7, Americans are still saying they took our jobs! the Labor Department revised its previous estimates for the number of jobs that have been lost over the past 25 months. What they found wasn't pretty.

Here is the news:

The government's monthly job report on Friday showed that the disastrous labor situation plaguing the nation's economy is moderating. But the report also underlines an unsettling reality: 8.4 million jobs have been vaporized since the recession began, and digging out won't be easy.

The unemployment rate fell unexpectedly in January to 9.7%. And businesses shed 20,000 jobs for the month, far fewer than the 150,000 jobs that were lost in December.

But, at the same time, the Labor Department revised its previous estimates for the number of jobs that have been lost over the past 25 months. What they found wasn't pretty.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 1.4 million more jobs than previously believed. The adjustments also showed losses for 2009 alone came to 4.8 million jobs, more than 600,000 additional lost jobs than previously estimated.

"We're coming out of a very, very steep downturn," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "The revisions show that we have a really big hole to come out of."

The revision came about because the government had been dramatically underestimating the number of businesses that were closing due to the recession.

Signs of improvement, but steep hill to climb
Economists estimate that the country needs to create at least 125,000 jobs per month just to keep up with the nation's expanding job force. That's why the downward revisions of past job losses are a stark reminder of how much the economy needs to turn around. There are now 14.8 million unemployed Americans, who have been jobless for an average of 30 weeks -- an all-time high.

"Even as today's numbers contain signs of the beginning of recovery, they are also a reminder of how far we still have to go to return the economy to robust health and full employment," said White House economist Christina Romer in a statement.

"It is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative," she added. "It is essential that we continue our efforts to move in the right direction and replace job losses with robust job gains.

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