Fantastic. I’ve now learned that not only is the United States in the most debt it has ever been in — $1 trillion, with a possible $2 million deficit by later this year — but unemployment is expected to continue to rise.
I thought the idea of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus plan was to get the country back on track economically, and that means lowering unemployment. According to an ABC News report today, unemployment has reached 9.5 percent.
And President Barack Obama made it clear today that he expects unemployment to keep worsening for a while as hiring lags behind other signs of economic recovery.
The Associated Press (AP) reported today that Obama wouldn’t comment on just how bad he thinks the jobless rate will grow.
“How employment numbers are going to respond is not year clear,” the president said, the AP reported. “My expectation is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months.”
However, it’s encouraging that we have seen some progress in the construction industry. Work has started to begin on many of the projects being funded by the stimulus. And that’s good news, especially since the construction industry has been hit pretty hard with the recession.
But we just have to keep moving forward and hope that we’ll continue on a road to recovery–both literally and figuratively.
