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NewsFlash: May 2, 2008

“This is what a recession looks like to a working family”

Although April’s payroll job decline of 20,000 is modest relative to expectations, this was the fifth straight month of private sector job erosion. Moreover, the fall in hours of work and the minimal wage increases (up $0.01) yielded a weekly wage boost over the last year of just 3.1%, far less than inflation, which is running at 4.3%.

Lawrence Mishel, the Economic Policy Institute’s president, said, “This is what a recession looks like to a working family—jobs being lost, having part-time rather than full-time work, weekly hours down and hourly wages growing more slowly and far less than the prices of things you buy.”

The economy has only grown at a 0.6% annual rate over the last six months. Heidi Shierholz, EPI economist, noted, “Because of six months of nearly absent growth we know that there’s much more job loss and unemployment in the pipeline, with falling incomes and consumption ahead of us”

For more on the underlying weakness of the recovery click here.
Watch for EPI’s Jobs Picture later today – /

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