And although you hear about layoffs, most people simply don’t understand the scope of these layoffs. That is until now…

This is a chart of Initial and Continued Employment Claims which I grabbed from www.calculatedriskblog.com.

As you can see, continued jobless claims have now eclipsed the peaks we saw during the mid-70’s and early-80’s recessions. Yet we are still expected to continue seeing heavy job losses throughout the remainder of the year.

There’s no way you can expect consumer spending (which makes up 70% of GDP) to rebound until jobs start being created again. That means high-end retailers like Macy’s (NYSE:M) which used to see a lot of sales from the middle-class over the past few years, should continue to see shares slide as the middle class tightens up and starts shopping at places like Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) instead.