Monday, January 11, 2010

Unemployment

It looks like the biggest economic story of 2010 will continue to be unemployment.

Last week the data came out for December. The US lost 85,000 jobs (which was considerably more than most economists had predicted), and the current rate of unemployment is 10.0%.

The chart is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website.

In Charlottesville, a printing plant that does work for Lexis announced that it is closing. The plant is located on Carlton Avenue and is owned by Cenveo (a national company); 61 employees will be put out of work (Bryan McKenzie has the story for the Progress here).

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Frank Rich wrote yesterday that a federal inquiry into the failure of the banking system begins shortly, and he wants it to produce some actual criticism of Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke's decisions to be more generous to AIG and the investment banks than was necessary.