Reader comments
Jobless rate jumps to 7.2 percent in December

Old senile 72 year old John McCain wanted to bail out the home owners- 600 billion dollars.

The media and economists called him a fool, but said nothing when the Democrats bailed out Citi Bank- credit card hijackers.

Now Obama is going to give home owners a tax break/cut.

How much of a tax break/cut does an unemployed home owner get? How many mortgage payments can she/he make? *** None***!

Welcome to 20 percent unemployment and tent dwellings.

I know that the economy is suffering right now, but how much of this high unemployment rate is caused by the increasing minimum wage? My guess is that the majority of the unemployed are the low wage earners. The national minimum wage is set to increase again in July. I think there needs to be a freeze on the minimum wage increase.

This will be an interesting year. We have extended family members who have lost their jobs, so the recession has impacted our family hard.

Yesterday at a departmental meeting, my husband's boss "reassured" his employees by saying, "your 401ks will be all right. You all have time to recoup your losses except " "! (My husband, who is 65!) I guess the boss thought that was funny....

We've been through these ups and downs before and we'll survive this one.

I am very frightened about the way America is heading. I have been out of work for 9 almost 10 months. Its hard for me to find a job now and its getting harder everyday. I only hope that our prez does something soon.

TheActuary | 7:55 a.m You need to blame the minimum wage. Then, you can blame liberals. The man I talked to yesterday that just was cut earned $45,000. The employees at KSL weren't low wage.

Republicans held the congress 10 out of 12 years. Bush has been president eight long years so, it must be liberals.

The methodology for calculating unemployment (among other things) has changed radically over the years. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics uses the same methods that were used pre-Reagan to show that we would be over 16% unemployed right now. Government has "improved" the methodology so it won't make things look so dire. Things really are worse than they're telling us.

Politicians have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are completly in incapable being trusted with taxpayers money.

It's both parties that are completely destroying our economy, the lives we're trying to build and pass on to our children. At every step of the way a politicain and their greedy beauracracy are the first ones in line with their hands out.

Despite her optimism, I feel for "Bad Times@ 8:52" because this is happening all across America and is only going to get much worse. Maybe somebody you know or yourself.

The current tax code, and all the politicians that thrive from it, should be an affront to every single taxpayer in America. We deserve better.

It's time to take the money out of DC's hands and put it back where it belongs. That people that earned it.

The Fair Tax or Flat Tax or something along these lines will return power where it belongs. TO YOU and ME. These probably won't be perfect but it's better than where were at right now.

Americans better stop fighting each other before it's too late.

@TheActuary: this recession is hitting everyone, not just the low-wage earners. What's happening is that the jobs and businesses created during the inflationary boom are being liquidated as the bubble deflates. Although the minimum-wage laws contribute to unemployment generally, the current sharp increase is caused primarily by deflation of the inflationary bubbles.

The unemployment rate will go back down to 4.5 percent if all illegal immigrants who now (illegally) hold jobs in this country were to be kicked out.

This while our politicians sit in their plush offices counting the recent pay raise they gave themselves.