United States

Today was a grim day for the US. Non farm payrolls, a leading indicator about the health of the United States economy, showed a loss of 533,000 jobs last month. In 2008, more than 1.9 million people are out of work. This doesn’t even take into consideration those new to the job market that can’t find work. The financial crisis is taking its toll both on the average citizen as well as major corporations who are increasingly pessimistic about the future. Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors said, “These numbers are shocking. Companies are sharply reacting to the economy’s problems and slashing costs. They are not trying to ride it out.” General Motors is a good example of this as they are planning to lay off another 2,000 works and cut shifts beginning February.  If this trend continues, we can see nemployment reaching 8.5% by next December. You can read more about how this affects the DOW at Yahoo Finance

Canada

Canada’s biggest trading partner is the United States, and with the US falling deeper into hard financial times Canada is feeling the pain. Today posted the biggest job loss in Canada since 1982 as they lost 70,600 jobs last month, raising the unemployment rate to a two year high of 6.3%.  

Europe

Although no job employment data was release for the Eurozone today, German factory orders came out. Orders dropped to a record low as demand fell 6.1% Foreign orders dropped at a slight higher amount of 6.2%. The outlook for Germany, which is Europe’s largest economy is poor as trade conditions fall. 

Sweden, which does not use the Euro, is also falling quickly. Like the US, the Sweden’s car industry has been hit very hard and is asking for a large rescue package. Currently the Swedish government has pledged SEK 8.3 bln to help the labor market but car companies Saab and Volvo are looking for additional assistance.  Sweden also lower interest rated by 1.75 % yesterday to help stimulate the economy.

Tags: Forex Market, job loss, recession, unemployment

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Discussion, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.