US jobless rate rose to 6.5% in October, the highest rate since March 1994. In the last three months alone, 651,000 jobs were cut. J. Cristoph Amberger says this is only going to get worse as more firms are forced to cut costs. He expects double-digit unemployment by January, rising to 15% by April.

This from Today’s Financial News:

I received a bunch of emails today from people who run businesses. Some are doctors. Other run construction companies or retail businesses. One doctor wrote: “I do have 18 non-physician employees in my practice. We partners plan to have a meeting before the end of the year, and decide the 2-3 employees that will have to be eliminated. Obama’s help for the middle class better be good, because there’s going to be a lot more unemployed.”

Another approached the same problem with an almost Salomonic attitude:

“I figure that the customer will have to see an increase in my fees to them of about 8-10%. I will also have to lay off six of my employees. This really bothered me as I believe we are family here and didn’t know how to choose who will have to go. So, this is what I did. I strolled through the parking lot and found eight Obama bumper stickers on my employees’ cars. I have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. It’s the fairest way I can think of to approach this problem.”

Think what you may about the selection method… Those layoffs will not make individual headlines. But in the next two months, America may have succeeded inflicting on itself what neither the Internet crash nor 9/11 were able to achieve. Double-digit unemployment and a chronically crippled consumer base.

Layoffs have begun already. Expect unemployment to hit 10% by January 10… and 15% by April.

At long last America may enjoy what its liberal protagonists have always aspired to: European economic conditions.

Source: Backlash: Expect unemployment to hit 10% by January 10… and 15% by April