Job losses surge 85% in August
The housing market meltdown is hitting the job market. Layoffs in the financial sector reached record levels in August as brokers and bankers were sacked by the thousands. And this may just be the beginning of the hurt, Dan Grech reports.
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Scott Jagow: The summer of 2007 will be remembered by a lot of people for what they lost: their homes, their credit. . . their jobs. Mortgage brokers and bankers were fired by the thousands last month. A report out this morning says overall, layoffs climbed 85 percent from July to August. More now from Dan Grech.
Dan Grech: The grave news came courtesy of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a Chicago personnel-placement firm. The firm’s Jim Pedderson says financial job cuts alone totaled nearly 36,000 — a record.
Jim Pedderson: The housing crunch, the fall in demand for mortgages, and the credit crunch, basically came to a head in August.
The news has economists like Jared Bernstein with the Economic Policy Institute sounding alarm bells.
Jared Bernstein: I’m very concerned. This could be a one-month spike, but more likely what we’re seeing here is the other shoe dropping.
He says first the mortgage meltdown cost investors billions. Now it’s bleeding into the job market, hitting everyone from lenders to construction workers.
And, Bernstein says, with a huge inventory of homes and continued lending problems, this isn’t going away overnight.
I’m Dan Grech for Marketplace.