Half a million jobless claims, second half projections look grim, stock market sell off and more BAD NEWS for our economy

Well more bad news for our economy today...

The Labor Department announced Thursday that initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000! That's the highest level since November and the third straight increase.

Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote to his clients, "Today's news on the economy has been nothing but awful," "The recovery is clearly slowing."

350,000 census jobs are now gone leaving those temporary workers to now apply for unemployment benefits. Obama's "Stimulus Projects" are coming and going leaving more temporary workers to apply for benefits and the list goes on and on. All the Stimulus and Census did was slightly prolong the bad situation. Another band-aid that just isn't sticking.

Manufacturing jobs in Indiana are leaving, comstruction jobs in Georgia are ending. Public stimulus construction projects are coming to a close and even local municipalities, cities and states are having to cut jobs due to a lack of finances. This all adds up to more and more unemployment claims.

Adding to the slow return of the economy is the cautious consumer. Consumers aren't willing to spend much money when there is an economic crisis at hand, the markets are selling off because of economists recalculating their earlier thoughts of recovery and growth in the second half of the year, and jobs market is looking worse and worse.

All this gathers up to another devistating blow to our economy and rather than things beginning to look up, we're now looking closer to slipping back in to a recession or worse.