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Well, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published their unemployment news yesterday, and it was nothing to smile about.

November 2008 US Unemployment Rate

November 2008 US Unemployment Rate

Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply (-533,000) in November, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. November’s drop in payroll employment followed declines of 403,000 in September and 320,000 in October, as revised. Job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors in November.

Oh, and by the way, these numbers only count the people who are actively looking for a job. An additional 422,000 people exited the work force for any number of reasons — they went back to school, retired or simply abandoned job searches out of sheer frustration.

Here is a link to the government’s full report in PDF or HTML if you are interested.

November 2008 UnemploymentWhere did all those jobs go? Well, we hear about a lot of the high profile losses:

But the reality is that the majority of the losses come from smaller companies who still make up the greatest number of people in the workforce. If the entire economy is hurting, a few jobs from each company adds up quick.

According to an Associated Press article:

President-elect Barack Obama said the crisis “is likely to get worse before it gets better,” and no one was going to argue that point. Economists predicted the unemployment rate, which rose to a 15-year high of 6.7 percent in November, could soar as high as 10 percent before skittish employers begin hiring again….

Employment shrank in virtually every part of the economy — factories, construction companies, financial firms, accounting and bookkeeping, architectural and engineering firms, hotels and motels, food services, retailers, temporary help, transportation, publishing, janitorial and building maintenance, and even waste management. The few fields spared included education, health care and government.

The United States — already in recession for a year, may not be out of it until the spring of 2010 — making for the longest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, economists are now saying. Recessions in the mid-1970s and early 1980s last 16 months.

Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent in 1982, terrible but still a far cry from the Depression, when roughly one in four Americans were out of work.

What does all of this mean? Well, if you’ve got a job – work hard and do everything you can to make your company one of the survivors so you can keep it!

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