Will We Recover?

The unemployment surge to 8.1 percent was driven, in large part, by job losses in the financial sector, manufacturing, and retail, and one economist tells The New York Times, “These jobs aren’t coming back. A lot of production either isn’t going to happen at all, or it’s going to happen somewhere other than the United States. There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, fewer financial services operations.” Over 2.5 million jobs have disappeared in the last four months. Rather than handing out unemployment benefits until economic growth resumes, some economists say “the government needs to place a greater emphasis on retraining workers for other careers.”