http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ar8O8agGg9AY&refer=homeBy Bob Willis and Rich Miller
(Corrects number of jobs lost in first paragraph of story published on April 4.)
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. may suffer further job losses in the coming months after employers cut payrolls by 663,000 in March and the unemployment rate jumped to a 25-year high of 8.5 percent.
A host of companies -- from manufacturers such as Johnson Controls Inc. and Dana Holding Corp. to service providers like International Business Machines Corp. and even the U.S. Postal Service -- have announced plans to eliminate jobs in the face of depressed demand from their customers.
“We expect labor-market conditions to remain appalling for many months to come,” Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. in New York, wrote in a client note following yesterday’s report from the Labor Department.
The risk is that a continued hemorrhaging of jobs triggers another round of spending cuts by consumers, pushing the economy deeper into a recession just as it is showing signs of steadying after plunging in the fourth quarter.
“We are not out of the woods yet,” Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said in a speech in Wooster, Ohio, yesterday. He added that the central bank and administration of President Barack Obama must remain “flexible and open” to taking further measures to help the economy.
Stocks rose yesterday for a fourth day as Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said measures to unfreeze credit markets were working. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed 8.1 points, or 1 percent, to close at 842.5. Treasuries fell on growing concern over the amount of borrowing needed to finance the budget deficit, pushing the yield on the 10-year note to 2.90 percent at yesterday’s close, up from 2.77 percent the previous day.
FULL story at link.
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