CNN 2010-02-18

How the heck do you miss nearly a million jobs during the recession? Boom, just vanished. Apparently¹ our experts did. Just minutes ago a new measure of just how bad the economy is, and it isn't good, folks.

 

CNN's Christine Romans in New York.

 

So how do you miss a number like that, Christine?
Because we always have revisions, and so there's always this tweaking of these numbers. So I'm going to tell you, Kyra, when you've had a labor² market in such utter distress³ as ours, we haven't since the early 1980s.

 

That means it was just so bad and so ugly that they couldn't capture it accurately⁴ over past months. And now they finally have a very good gauge⁵ of just how bad it was. And so here is the overall bad picture.

 

In the recession we lost 8.4 million jobs. We thought it was something like 7.2, it's 8.4 million jobs. So what these numbers from the Labor Department today tell us it was much worse than we thought overall, but -- but, it has stabilized⁶ in recent months, the past three months or so.

 

And the unemployment rate in January fell to 9.7 percent from 10 percent. We lost 20,000 jobs just in January. We thought maybe we would create some, but we didn't. We lost 20,000 jobs, and now you put this all in the big picture. You've got a really horrific two or three year period, but as the Labor Department points out, you've got in the past three or four months, a real stabilization⁷ in how many jobs have been lost.

 

Let me show you just for January what was happening in the industry that you may work in. Construction lost another 75,000 jobs. This is a pick up. This shows you the construction industry is still kind of in trouble and is losing a lot more jobs.

 

Transportation warehousing lost 19,000 jobs. There were some gains in temporary workers. And as we've told you many, many times, Kyra, when you start to see companies tiptoeing in to hire temporary workers, it means they're starting to feel a little bit better.

 

So far that temporary help is not translating into full-time⁸ help, though. We still want to see that.

 

Retail⁹ jobs, 42,000 created. Health care, 15,000. No surprise there. Government jobs, 33,000. A couple of economists¹⁰ this morning telling me they think census¹¹ hiring is the reason. And you're going to see more job creation like that in the months ahead.

 

So what does this mean overall? Well, I've been asking economists. We've been getting all these e-mails from economists. They're saying look, it means the labor market was abysmal¹² for the past couple of years. It means you might still not have a job and it's going to be still hard to get a job, but it is thawing¹⁴. It is starting to thaw¹³ out and those mass, mass layoffs¹⁵ that we saw exactly a year ago, they seemed to have slowed or stopped.

 

So job creation, many economists say, is just around the corner, and that hang in there, because they think the jobs growth will come in sometime here in the early part of the year
 

1 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

2 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

3 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

4 accurately   

adv.准确地，精确地

参考例句：

• It is hard to hit the ball accurately.准确地击中球很难。
• Now scientists can forecast the weather accurately.现在科学家们能准确地预报天气。

5 gauge   

v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器

参考例句：

• Can you gauge what her reaction is likely to be?你能揣测她的反应可能是什么吗？
• It's difficult to gauge one's character.要判断一个人的品格是很困难的。

6 stabilized   

v.（使）稳定， （使）稳固( stabilize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The patient's condition stabilized. 患者的病情稳定下来。
• His blood pressure has stabilized. 他的血压已经稳定下来了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

7 Stabilization   

稳定化

参考例句：

• The position of barycentre on plane directly impacts the stabilization and manipulation of plane. 飞机重心位置直接影响飞机的稳定和操纵特性。
• With the higher olefins, stabilization of the energetic intermediates occurs more easily. 在较高的烯烃情况下，高能的中间物稳定作用更易出现。

8 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

9 retail   

v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格

参考例句：

• In this shop they retail tobacco and sweets.这家铺子零售香烟和糖果。
• These shoes retail at 10 yuan a pair.这些鞋子零卖10元一双。

10 economists   

n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sudden rise in share prices has confounded economists. 股价的突然上涨使经济学家大惑不解。
• Foreign bankers and economists cautiously welcomed the minister's initiative. 外国银行家和经济学家对部长的倡议反应谨慎。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 census   

n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查

参考例句：

• A census of population is taken every ten years.人口普查每10年进行一次。
• The census is taken one time every four years in our country.我国每四年一次人口普查。

12 abysmal   

adj.无底的，深不可测的，极深的；糟透的，极坏的；完全的

参考例句：

• The film was so abysmal that I fell asleep.电影太糟糕，看得我睡着了。
• There is a historic explanation for the abysmal state of Chinese cuisine in the United States.中餐在美国的糟糕状态可以从历史上找原因。

13 thaw   

v.（使）融化，（使）变得友善；n.融化，缓和

参考例句：

• The snow is beginning to thaw.雪已开始融化。
• The spring thaw caused heavy flooding.春天解冻引起了洪水泛滥。

14 thawing   

n.熔化，融化v.（气候）解冻( thaw的现在分词 )；（态度、感情等）缓和；（冰、雪及冷冻食物）溶化；软化

参考例句：

• The ice is thawing. 冰在融化。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• It had been snowing and thawing and the streets were sloppy. 天一直在下雪，雪又一直在融化，街上泥泞不堪。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

15 layoffs   

临时解雇( layoff的名词复数 )； 停工，停止活动

参考例句：

• Textile companies announced 2000 fresh layoffs last week. 各纺织公司上周宣布再次裁员两千人。
• Stock prices broke when the firm suddenly announced layoffs. 当公司突然宣布裁员时，股票价格便大跌