U.S. Jobless Rate Hits 8.9%

Job losses are still massive, but they are not as big as they once were. How awful has the recession been? So awful that a month with 539,000 job losses is considered an improvement.

Economists were expecting April totals to reach 620,000 job cuts, but the number was better thanks to what the AP described as "a burst of government hiring."

In Washington, President Obama called the increase in unemployment a “sobering toll” of the recession and warned of more job losses ahead. He said that a recovery could take months or years, but that the moderation in the rate of declining jobs was encouraging.

“The gears of our economic engine do appear to be slowly turning once again,” Mr. Obama said. “Step by step, we’re beginning to make progress.”

Not to say we are bottoming out or leveling off, but you need some sort of evidence at some point to show we are trending in the right direction.

Source: NYT