Wednesday, May 6, 2009
April’s Job Loss Report Less of a Train Wreck Than March’s
The number of job cuts made during April was the lowest since October. That’s the latest from outplacement services provider Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which said today that “planned workforce reductions” in April were 132,590–12 percent fewer than the more than 150,000 recorded in March. Great news, right? Until you realize that the “planned reductions” to which the company refers were up 47 percent from a year earlier and are still at recession levels.
The markets mounted an impressive comeback Friday–the likes of which has not been seen since the 1930s–rallying on a financial intervention by the government. With Adam Smith’s oft-lauded “invisible hand” giving investors the invisible finger and the U.S. mired in one of the worst market crises in recent history, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke finally decided to act.
