9.5% unemployment. WHO IS MAKING MONEY?

 Who has all of the jobs out there. I am a retired Electrician. People still have problems and still need to hire people to fix them. All of the large scale industrial companies have cut back. Why will unemployment just stop at 10% what is holding it back from 15 or 20% ??? People like to be positive but things have gone bad in a big way now. I just don't see what will stop it..

By Shobhana Chandra

July 2 (Bloomberg) -- Employers in the U.S. cut more jobs than forecast in June and the unemployment rate rose to the highest in almost 26 years, offering scant evidence the Obama administration’s stimulus package is putting Americans back to work.

Payrolls declined by 467,000 last month following a 322,000 drop in May, according to Labor Department figures released today in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 9.5 percent, the highest since August 1983, from 9.4 percent.

Stocks tumbled and bond yields fell as investors bet the 18th straight month of job losses will further sap consumer spending, weakening a recovery from the deepest recession in half a century. The economy has lost about 6.5 million jobs since December 2007 as companies from General Motors Corp. to Kimberly-Clark Corp. reduce costs.

“Companies are laying off people and not hiring them back,” said Roger Kubarych, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Global Research in New York, who forecast payrolls would decline by 450,000. “This leaves us with a weak, irregular recovery.”

Stocks slid, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropping 2.3 percent to 902.21 at 3:14 p.m. in New York. Treasuries rose, sending yields on benchmark 10-year notes to 3.50 percent from 3.54 percent late yesterday.

The growing ranks of the jobless are allowing companies to restrain wage growth and reduce the work week, eroding the consumer spending that makes up about 70 percent of the economy, today’s report suggested.

Bargaining Power

“Workers’ bargaining power for wages is evaporating,” said Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “Outright declines in wages could unravel the recent stabilization we’ve seen in consumer spending and home sales.”

The average work week fell to 33 hours, the lowest level since records began in 1964, from 33.1 hours in May, today’s report showed. Average weekly hours worked by production workers rose to 39.5 hours from 39.4 hours, while overtime held at 2.8 hours. That brought the average weekly earnings down to $611.49 from $613.34.

Workers’ average hourly wages held at $18.53 for a second month. Hourly earnings were 2.7 percent higher than June 2008, the smallest gain since September 2005. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast a 0.1 percent increase from the prior month and a 2.9 percent gain for the 12-month period.

Below Peak

President Barack Obama called the report “sobering news” and said it would take “more than a few months” to turn the economy around.

“While there are continuing signs that the recession is slowing, this is not much comfort to Americans who have lost their job,” Obama said in a Rose Garden appearance after meeting energy business leaders.

The payrolls decline in June was still well below the peak of 741,000 jobs lost in January, suggesting the economy remains on track for a recovery later this year, economists said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ayi7O6kh8hxw