According to an article in the New York Times, the unemployment rate has now reached 7.6%, losing 600,000 jobs alone in the month of January. In the article President Obama was quoted as saying, "All of us in Washington must remember that we’re here to work for the American people. And if we drag our feet and fail to act, this crisis will turn into a catastrophe." So what is to be done? Reportedly, Obama has been putting pressure on Congress "to pass the economic stimulus package." Something has to be done soon because more and more people are being laid off everyday and many have families to support. However, the road to recovering the American economy is not going to be an easy one as we are reminded by Ian Shepherdson (who is the "chief North American economist for High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y..."). He said, "We remain firmly of the view that the package now in Congress is the bare minimum required to slow the shrinkage of the economy over the next year."
It seems as though the only career field that is not suffering as much is the health care industry because that is a necessity. The article states that retailers did not do well this past holiday season at all and as a result had to drop 45,000 jobs. It seems as though the stores do not have as much in stock as they used to and every time I go to the grocery store I see the prices have gone up but (for example) the amount of pasta they give you in a box keeps decreasing.
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