In a shower of pink slips, U.S. employers cut jobs last month for the first time in more than four years, the starkest signal yet that the economy is grinding to a halt if it hasn’t already toppled into recession.
Conditions are deteriorating, according to the most up-to-date employment snapshot by the Labor Department, which showed nervous employers slicing payrolls by 17,000. The country hasn’t seen such a nationwide job loss since 2003, when employers were still struggling to recover from the last previous recession.
“We are certainly on thin ice,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia. And even President Bush, normally a cheerleader for the economy, said there were “serious signs” it was weakening.
Am I the only one irritated by the phrase, “the economy is grinding to a halt”? My lawn-mower sometimes grinds to a halt, but even in a depression, I don’t think the economy ever really [i] grinds [/i] to a [i] halt. [/i] What would that mean, no commercial transactions whatsoever? No factories operating at all? Come now.
It is curious that, well down into the article, is says that private employers actually increased employment by 1000. If they were really “nervous”, then why did they do that? It states that it was the government that cut 18,000 jobs, causing the net loss to be 17,000. Hence, the first part of the article is misleading & a bit over-blown.