US loses half a million jobs, European industrial output falls

Friday brought more bad news for the US economy. From Bloomberg:

The U.S. lost more jobs in 2008 than in any year since 1945 as employers fired another 524,000 people in December, indicating a free-fall in the economy just days before President-elect Barack Obama takes office...

The Labor Department reported that the nation lost 2.589 million jobs in 2008, just shy of the 2.75 million decline at the end of World War II. The unemployment rate climbed more than economists forecast, to 7.2 percent in December, the highest level in almost 16 years.

The employment situation in Canada has also been deteriorating. Bloomberg reports:

Canada’s jobless rate rose to the highest in almost three years last month and employment fell by almost twice as much as economists expected as the country suffered from the global recession.

The jobless rate rose to 6.6 percent in December from 6.3 percent, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. Employers cut a net 34,400 workers after a drop of 70,600 in November...

Separately today, Statistics Canada said building permits fell 12 percent in November to the lowest since February 2007, while Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said housing starts fell 0.4 percent last month to the lowest since 2001.

The reports from Europe on Friday were not much better. Although eurozone retail sales rose 0.6 percent in November, they were still down 1.5 percent from the previous year.

And European industrial output is falling across the continent. From Bloomberg:

Industrial production plunged throughout Europe in November as the global recession deepened, adding pressure on the European Central Bank to cut interest rates.

Industrial output in Germany, the euro area’s largest economy, fell a seasonally adjusted 3.1 percent from October, extending the worst decline since data for a reunified Germany was first compiled in 1991, the Economy Ministry in Berlin said today. In France, production tumbled 2.4 percent in November, the fourth monthly decline, the statistics office in Paris said...

Industrial production in November also declined in Spain, Greece, Slovenia and the euro area’s newest member, Slovakia...

And the same goes for the UK, reports Reuters:

The Office for National Statistics said on Friday manufacturing output was 7.4 percent lower than a year earlier, its biggest fall since June 1981 when Britain was in the throes of an industrial meltdown that decimated its car industry and coal mines.

Production was down 2.9 percent in November alone, the biggest monthly fall since one-off plant closures for the Queen's jubilee in the summer of 2002, and more than four times the drop forecast by economists polled by Reuters...

The broader industrial output measure, which includes North Sea oil production and power generation as well as factory output, dropped 2.3 percent on the month for a 6.9 percent annual fall. That annual rate was the weakest since March 1981.