Associated Press reporter Mark Hamrick spotlights the worsening unemployment rate in this video segment. Recession-battered employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent.

Hamrick observes that the government has confirmed many more people joined the unemployment lines last month with the pace of job loss accelerating and giving the economic situation an increasingly ominous tone. The job losses follow announcements coming from companies across the spectrum, ranging from manufacturing to high technology.

Jon Silvia, Chief Economist at Wachovia Corporation is interviewed and says “The avalanche of job losses won’t ease up anytime soon. We’ll lose a million more jobs over the next three months.” In a nod to optimism, Silvia added “Once we get into the 3rd and 4th quarters we’ll see more professional business service jobs, more investment technology jobs, as well as education and health opening up in the public sector.”

Hamrick concludes the segment when he states “In the meantime, the recession’s toll continues to mount.”

The President responds to the unemployment figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These numbers are a promising indication that we are on the road to recovery, as the unemployment rate decreased in July. August 7, 2009.

The President says a few words about the state of the economy. He opened with discussion of America’s Gross Domestic Product and said it showed marked improvement over the last few months. He added, “This morning, we received additional signs that the worst may be behind us. Though we lost 247,000 jobs in July, that was nearly 200,000 fewer jobs lost than in June, and far fewer than the nearly 700,000 jobs a month that we were losing at the beginning of the year.”

The President also said there is a lot of misinformation about the Recovery Act and explained that the Act is divided into three parts. One-third of the money is for tax relief going directly to families and small businesses. Another third of the money in the Recovery Act is for emergency relief that is helping people who have borne the brunt of the recession. Two thirds of the Recovery Act have helped people weather the worst phase of the recession. The last third is dedicated to the vital investments that are putting people back to work today to create a stronger economy tomorrow. He added that the jobs rebuilding America, upgrading roads and bridges, and renovating schools and hospitals.

President Obama added that the nation can’t afford to return to an economy based on inflated profits and maxed out credit cards; an economy where we depend on dirty and outdated sources of energy; an economy where we’re burdened by soaring health care costs that serve only the special interests. He said that it will not create sustainable growth, it won’t shrink our deficit, and it won’t create jobs. Instead, now is the time to build a new foundation for a stronger, more productive economy that creates the jobs of the future.

The President concluded his Rose Garden address with a bit of optimism, “ I am convinced that we can see a light at the end of tunnel, but now we’re going to have to move forward with confidence and conviction to reach the promise of a new day.”

David Tice, chief portfolio strategist at Federated Investors, talks with Bloomberg’s Matt Miller and Kathleen Hays about the outlook for the U.S. economy. Tice also discusses a report showing U.S. employers cut more jobs than forecast in June, the government’s response to the financial crisis and the outlook for stocks.

Miller acknowledged that the decline is worse than expected and asks “What are we going to see as far as unemployment in the future?” Tice responded that he thought it will go much higher, that it will get to 12 or 15 percent, maybe higher. He said “This is a secular decline in the economy; we really do believe there is going to be a depression. A lot of businesses are hanging on by a thread and they are going to throw in the towel.”

Host Miller commented that the nation has had 7 quarters in a row of declining inventory, and asks “Haven’t we gone down far enough?” Tice responds “It is not just an inventory recession. This is the dramatic aftermath of a credit bubble. We built too much, we eat too much, we drink too much and we spend too much. Now we have a big hangover.”

Chris Lawrence of CNN reports live from Fort Hood, U.S. Army base in Texas on how the national unemployment rate may be very high, but it is even higher for jobless veterans. Lawrence states that 1000 U.S. Army veterans at Fort Hood alone are leaving the service every month. Lawrence says recent veterans have an unemployment rate that was over 10% before the rest of the country as whole did. He added that over 160,000 U.S. Army veterans are currently unemployed and seeking jobs.

Lawrence interviews a female soldier who is leaving the Army and will soon be seeking a civilian job. She says she is stressed-out by the fact that she will soon become a civilian and describes it as a “frightening transition.” After three deployments to Iraq, taking fire on the battlefield and having vehicles blown out from under her, the soldier’s biggest challenge is finding a job and starting a family.

Reporter Lawrence then travels to Fort Hood’s Transition Office where he is told that the biggest challenge for those making the transition to civilian life is to “make military skills relevant on a resume in the civilian world.” Lawrence notes that in the civilian corporate world, individual employee efforts are known to their employers, but that in the military the emphasis is always on team efforts and that the gap is hard to bridge for many job seeking soldiers these days. Most of the soldiers headed for civilian life say that they hope the military discipline and experience they received in actual war will “make up for what they lack” on their resumes as civilian employee hopefuls.