Well, they ARE scary. The jobless rate for December shot up 0.4 percent from 6.8% to 7.2% as the economy shed nearly 600,000 jobs. It brought the total job loss for the year to 2.8 million and is hitting every sector of the economy and every region of the country :The 7.2 percent was the highest unemployment rate since January 1993, when the country was still shaking off a jobless recovery from the 1990-91 recession. The loss in total jobs for 2008 was the largest since 1945.“These numbers, back to back, of more than a half million a month suggest that the U.S. economy is in a freefall,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. “It’s scary, and it indicates that unless something is done and done quickly to turn this economy around, we’re looking at an awful situation this year.”The toll of job losses cut across every sector. Nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in 2008, and 630,000 construction jobs disappeared as...(Read Full Post)