Vermont Unemployment Jumps

VT Dept. of Employment and Training sez:

The Department of Employment and Training announced Thursday a seasonally adjusted state unemployment rate of 4.3 percent for September, an increase of four tenths of a point from the revised estimate for the previous month.
...
Private industry job growth in September slipped to 1.2 percent annually.

Anecdotally, I hear more economic bad news. This summer's retail situation down on Church Street in Burlington was relatively good, but not a banner season by any means. Unfortunately the merchants, including one of Stef's friends, are finding September and October to be cruel months.

My guess is that consumer spending was decent in the summer, especially because of the temporary thrill of a few hundred bucks from Bush's ill-advised tax cuts, but folks are starting to back off now that they've run up more debt and winter is coming on. X-mas might still nudge things up a bit, but I worry with a job market that's still uncertain at best, jobs not being created even as layoffs are slowing a bit, heating fuel prices are going to be high, and so on, the economy is still not going to get out the slump.

ntodd  ¶ 5:32 PM