The White House says America's employment picture is worse than the Obama administration had anticipated just a few months ago. The somber admission follows the latest jobless report showing the highest unemployment rate the United States has seen in more than 25 years.
白宫表示，美国的就业形势比奥巴马政府几个月前预期的还差。就在白宫承认就业局势不容乐观之前，最新失业报告显示美国失业率创了近25年来的新高。
U.S. unemployment jumped a half percent in May, to 9.4 percent prompting this comment by Austan Goolsbee, a member of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisors:
美国失业率5月份又上升半个百分点，达到9.4%。奥巴马经济顾问小组的古斯毕说：
"The economy clearly has gotten substantially worse from the initial predictions that were being made, not just by the White House, but by all of the private sector," said Austan Goolsbee.
“显然经济比最初预期的差很多。不只是白宫的预测有偏差，而且几乎所有其他人预测都如此。”
Economists point out that the current jobless rate is already higher than the hypothetical rate that was used to calculate the health of banks and other financial institutions in so-called "stress tests" earlier this year. And, the upward unemployment trajectory is expected to continue in coming months, even if the overall economy begins to recover.
经济学家们指出，现在的实际失业率已经超过了年初用于评估银行财务状况和金融机构压力测试所使用的预期失业率。同时，就算总体经济开始复苏，失业率攀升的趋势还将维持几个月。
Austan Goolsbee spoke on Fox News Sunday:
古斯毕在福克斯星期日新闻节目时说：
"It is going to be a rough patch [difficult period], not just in the immediate term, but for a little bit of time [in the future]," he said. "You have to turn the economy around, and jobs and job growth tends to come after you turn the economy around."
“未来一段时间将是一个很艰难时期，这不仅仅只是指中期，而且更长一段时间内都是如此。我们必须先扭转经济，随后才能改变就业状况和创造就业增长。”
But Friday's employment news was not all bad. Although the U.S. jobless rate continues to spike higher, the actual number of Americans who lost jobs during the month was the smallest since last September, the fourth consecutive month in which the pace of job losses slowed.
但星期五的就业信息并不完全令人失望。虽然失业率继续攀升，在过去一个月里失去工作的美国人人数却是继去年9月以来最少的一个月，而且也是连续第4个月失业继续减少。
How can the unemployment rate continue to rise sharply while job losses are growing milder? Goolsbee says recent indicators showing improvement in some sectors of the U.S. economy are encouraging Americans who had stopped looking for work to re-enter the job market. With a larger pool of workers comes higher unemployment when the economy continues to shed jobs.
Last week saw the federal government become a majority shareholder in U.S. automaker General Motors, which filed for bankruptcy. Also appearing on Fox News Sunday, Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby was asked if the United States is headed towards a form of socialism. Shelby noted that GM is just the latest private corporation to fall under government control since the financial crisis struck last year.
上周联邦政府成为申请破产的美国通用汽车公司的最大股东。一同出现在“福克斯星期日新闻节目”的阿拉巴马州共和党参议员谢尔比被问到，美国是否在走向某种形势的社会主义。谢尔比认为，通用公司只是在去年经济危机开始后又一个落入政府控制的私人企业。
"They [federal officials] intervened last fall in the bank crisis," said Senator Shelby. "No one has ever done it on that scale before. Now the automobile crisis. There is no doubt that we are going to government intervention everywhere, government ownership [that is] unprecedented in this country. It is a slippery slope."
他说：“联邦政府去年夏天插手银行危机，这是以前从未有过的。现在轮到汽车工业危机。无庸置疑的是，政府介入方方面面，这种国家所有的状况是前所未有的，这是走下坡。”
President Obama has said he has no interest in running General Motors, and will leave company decisions to GM senior management. Mr. Obama has said the federal government's ownership of GM shares will be temporary.
奥巴马曾说联邦政府并不想经营通用公司，而且公司的决定权将留给公司的高级高层管理人员。他还说联邦政府持有通用股份只是暂时的。 |