Press Release

Unemployment dips to 8.5%; 200K jobs added

Friday, January 06, 2012

Associated PressWASHINGTON - Four painful years after the Great Recession struck and wiped out 8.7 million jobs, the United States may finally be in an elusive pattern known as the virtuous cycle - an escalating loop of robust job growth, healthier spending and higher demand.

The nation added 200,000 jobs in December in a burst of hiring that drove the unemployment rate down two ticks to 8.5 percent, its lowest in almost three years, and led economists to conclude that the improvement in the job market might just last.

"There is more horsepower to this economy than most believe," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. "The stars are aligned right for a meaningful economic recovery."

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Meanwhile, oil and gas companies, are struggling to find engineers willing to relocate to rural areas where most of the drilling is done, said Jack Downing, managing partner for the recruiting firm MRINetwork WorldBridge Partners in Chicago.
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