More news today:

The economy shed 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment, presenting a stark sign that the country may already be in a recession.

Sharp downturns in the manufacturing and construction sectors led the decline, the biggest in five years. The Labor Department also said employers cut far more jobs in January and February than originally estimated.

There were fewer jobs in March than there had been five months earlier. In the last 50 years, whenever there has been an employment downturn like the one of the last few months, a recession has followed.

    Working on a big project so thoughts are brief today. Have a great weekend.

UPDATE: this slipped into my email so what the heck…statement from John Sweeney:

Today’s jobs report is a disaster and we need to take action now.

While the business elite wrings its hands and analyzes what this means for the faceless economy, working people already know.  This report means there are 434,000 more people who had to tell their kids they might have to move and their parents that they can’t help pay for prescriptions anymore.  The ranks of the unemployed have increased by 1.1 million over the past year.  This report is the story of nearly eight million unemployed men and women who have no place to go in the morning except to hunt for jobs that won’t be there.

The picture is particularly bad for African American and Latino workers who have suffered an increase in the unemployment rate over triple that of white workers.  As we remember the Rev. Martin Luther King on this tragic anniversary, we must move forward with his dream of a decent life for all Americans.

 

Immediately, we have to face the reality that there are no new jobs and that we need to extend unemployment benefits and increase food stamps to keep these families from going under.  We need an immediate halt to foreclosures on subprime mortgages.  And we need to provide fiscal relief to help states avoid the recessionary effect of budget cuts and tax increases.  Then we need to start creating jobs.  This country has miles of crumbling roads to repair, and thousands of schools, bridges and other infrastructure needs to attend to.  It’s time to put America to work.

That’s for the short term.  Long term we need to do no less than a complete turnaround of this country’s economic policy, putting an end to self-destructive trade pacts, lax regulatory regimes and corporate profiteering.