Idaho pays out record jobless benefits:
From the Idaho Statesman:
A record $10.4 million in regular unemployment benefits were paid to an all-time-high 39,000 idled Idaho workers this week, the state Labor Department said Friday.
The recession's grip on the Idaho economy will trigger a further extension of jobless benefits on Monday.
The news comes as the government reported that the national unemployment rate climbed to 7.6 percent in January, up four-tenths of 1 percent. The government said the nation lost 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974.
The unemployment rate is the highest in 16 years, and seems headed for double digits.
Some 3.6 million jobs have disappeared so far in a deepening recession, which is shaping up as the biggest job killer in the post-World War II period and is raising pressure on President Barack Obama and Congress to agree quickly on a huge economic stimulus plan to stop the hemorrhaging.
Oh, please. All that the government can do is to make this worse.
We’re following in the steps of Hoover and FDR. The only thing that will fix Obama’s big spending will be a war. God help us.
"We're talking years - not months - before we see a decent recovery in the jobs market," predicted Sung Won Sohn, economist at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University. "It is going to get worse before it gets better."
Idaho unemployment data for January won't be released for three more weeks as statisticians conduct an annual review. The rate was 6.4 percent in December, up from 2.8 percent a year earlier and the highest rate in more than 20 years. Nearly 50,000 Idahoans were looking for jobs as the year ended.
This is the second straight week that the Idaho Department of Labor has paid out more than $10 million in unemployment benefits, but the $200,000 increase from the previous week was expected as part of a well-established seasonal pattern.