Economic Recovery Not Translating to Jobs

According to Forbes.com the Labor Department reported a surprise increase in weekly unemployment. For the past three weeks their has been consecutive rise in unemployment. In the last week unemployment has risen to 480,000 , up from the prior weeks 472,000 and the week before 460,000. Large public companies like Walmart, Verizon, Home Depot, Warner Cable and Sony have cut thousands of jobs.

"Wal-Mart Stores ( WMT - news - people ), the largest employer in the U.S., said in January it would eliminate 11,200 jobs, including 10,000 workers at its Sam’s Club stores, and another 1,200 member-recruitment workers."

"As of last week, the Forbes.com Layoff Tracker counted 684,531 layoffs announced at America's 500 largest public companies since Nov. 1, 2008. (See “The Weekly Layoff Report: Verizon Cuts Thousands More.”

While they don't mention which states specifically these companies are cutting jobs in, it explicitly shows that unemployment is increasing in number as the weeks progress. Today we learned that the U.S. is at a 10% average unemployment rate with certain states having higher unemployment rates than others.

Is this country headed to a depression? If this pattern continues we could be headed to long-run fluctuation of unemployment. I wonder if the national average will take a steep jump or will it level back to 10% as a result of more people falling into the discouraged workers category.

www.forbes.com/2010/02/04/jobless-claims-unemployment-markets-equities-economy.html