Australia needs a lifesaver this year

Melbourne's Age paper has a grim prediction for 2009 today from the country's top economists:

A quarter of a million Australians could lose their jobs and growth will slow to a crawl - unemployment will hit 6.4 per cent by the end of this year — more than a percentage point above the official Treasury forecast — and growth will slow to 0.7 per cent.

Call that conservative!
And in the US the jobless queues are growing fast: The number of laid-off

workers drawing unemployment benefits rose to 4.5 million in late December.

This article comparing today with the Great Depression notes that during that depression, unemployment didn´t start with 25 percent. In 1929, the unemployment rate was less than five percent and in 1930, unemployment was below 10 percent. It was not until 1933 that unemployment peaked at a staggering 25 percent. The obvious conclusion is that rising unemployment is a progressive consequence of continued economic deterioration.
(Photo credit: Tourism Australia)