"payrolls unexpectedly fell by 101,000 in December and the unemployment rate stayed at 6 percent, capping the worst two years for job creation since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s."
" Factories slashed 65,000 jobs, prompting the industry to declare that continued losses have "reached crisis proportions," said Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers."
" The total of unemployed workers rose to 8.6 million in December, up 82,000 from November, and 381,000 since October. The number of unemployed for at least 15 weeks climbed to 3.2 million, up 815,000 over the year."
" Manufacturers continued to contract, too, shedding 65,000 jobs in December. The sector lost 592,000 jobs last year and 2.4 million since April 1998."
The votes of 8.6 million unemployed Americans can change the outcome of a lot of future elections.
If Eisenhower and the republicans did not have so many out of work americans in the late 1950's, we could have avoided the Kennedy-Johnson-Vietnam-1968-gun-control-rioting periods of the 1960's.
The recession of 1974-75 gave us the Carter years.
"It is the economy, stupid" made Bush senior a one term president and gave us the clinton years.