The American economy lost 159,000 jobs in September, the worst month of retrenchment in five years, the government reported on Friday, enhancing fears that an already pronounced downturn had entered a more painful stage that could last well into next year.
Employment has diminished for nine consecutive months, resulting in the elimination of 760,000 jobs, according to the Labor Department report. Most of that occurred before the trauma of recent weeks, when a string of prominent Wall Street institutions nearly collapsed, prompting the government to propose a $700 billion rescue package.
“It’s a dismal report and the worst thing about it is that it does not reflect the recent seizure that we’ve seen in the credit markets,” said Michael T. Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners, a research and trading firm in Greenwich, Conn. “There’s really nothing good about this report at all. We’ve lost jobs in nearly every area of the economy, and this is going to worse before it gets better because the credit markets have deteriorated basically on a daily basis for the last few weeks.”
Click to expand...