Employment in the U.S. construction industry is hurting, but Hardhats have plenty of company.

On Jan. 9 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation shed 524,000 jobs in December, capping 12 months of declining payroll employment. The BLS figures show that the U.S. economy lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since December 2007. Job losses accelerated sharply in the last quarter of 2008, with an average of 216,000 jobs lost per month over the year but an average of 510,000 lost per month in the last three months.

"As this jobs picture shows, the U.S. labor market is deteriorating more quickly than in past recessions, and virtually all signals indicate that the economy is no where near the bottom," said Heidi Shierholz of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute. "Since U.S. consumers are now under such strain that they are unable to consume what the economy is able to produce, the government is the sole remaining spender with the capacity to bolster aggregate demand and thereby create jobs.

"It is essential that government now embrace that role with swift action on a massive recovery package large enough to generate sufficient jobs to prevent further increases in the U.S. unemployment rate."

The EPI reported that the total loss of more than 1.5 million jobs in the fourth quarter of 2008 - a 1.1% drop in employment - the largest quarterly loss as a percentage of employment since the first quarter of 1975.

The unemployment rate rose from 6.8% in November to 7.2% in December, the highest rate in almost 16 years, and an increase of 2.3 points since the recession started in December 2007, when the unemployment rate was 4.9%. Over the past 12 months, 3.5 million workers have been added to the jobless rolls. There are now 11.1 million unemployed workers in this country.

"As bad as the official 7.2 percent unemployment rate is," the AFL-CIO said, "the situation for unemployed or underemployed is actually far worse. The official unemployment rate of 7.2 percent does not include underemployed workers and those who are discouraged, and if they were included, analysts estimate the U.S. unemployment rate would be 13.5 percent, up 6 percentage points from 2007."
On Jan. 7, the BLS reported that Michigan's November seasonally adjusted jobless rate was 9.6 percent, the nation's highest. The highest rate in November was in northeast lower Michigan at 12.2 percent. The lowest rate was 6 percent in the Ann Arbor area.