The really bad news still continue...

Job losses (unemployment figures) arguably are the most important variable when it comes to evaluating whether economies are recovering from the economic recession. Despite evidence of many "green shoots" job losses in the U.S. continues to mount with the latest figures shocking investors.

Financial Times reported as follows:

The US economy shed another 467,000 jobs last month, signalling aggressive government stimulus measures are failing to unshackle the labour force from the grips of the recession.

The result was worse than economists expected and pushed the unemployment rate from 9.4 per cent to 9.5 per cent, a 26-year high. Thursday’s figure shows further erosion from the previous month’s decline of a revised 322,000 drop.

“If you were banking on the US driving a vigorous recovery, think again,” said Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. “The employment report can largely be taken at face value, and the face value story is a labour market that is not improving nearly as rapidly as the May data suggested.”

Since the recession began in December 2007, 6.5m jobs have been lost and the unemployment rate has climbed by 4.6 percentage points. Although the US has shed jobs in each of the last 18 months, the June losses still mark an improvement from the first three months of the year when an average of 691,000 jobs per month were lost.

The job losses reported by the labour department on Thursday were widespread across industries with manufacturing, business services and construction.

A mix of recent data during the last month has raised hopes that the US is due for a recovery from the worst recession in the last 50 years. However the timing or shape of that recovery remains muddled as people and companies deal with unprecedented uncertainty and fears over unemployment continue to crimp demand.

Manufacturing and housing have shown some signs of life amid a strong stock market rally in the first quarter, but consumer confidence continues to face headwinds and construction spending is sputtering.