Unemployment rises and the average work weeks plummets.

Associated Press — The nation’s unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide swath of employers eliminated 663,000 jobs. It’s fresh evidence of the toll the recession has inflicted on America’s workers, and economists say there’s no relief in sight.

5.1 millions jobs has been lost since the recession began at the end of 2007.  The average workweek has dropped to 33hrs, a new record low.  Stocks will probably dip today in reaction to the job data, less than an hour in the DOW is down 40 points.  This bad news was predicted but it is still unwelcome.  The employment data tends to lag the state of the economy so we can expect when unemployment levels off we will probably be seeing an uptick in the economy.  We are about at 8.5% unemployment.  Some may view this as not a very high number but in regards to the population of the US, about 300 million, that’s roughly 25 million people. For a country that has about 1/3 of the worlds wealth, we cannot find jobs for less than 1% of the worlds population.  Is it that we cannot find the jobs? or that we wont and refuse to?