In December of 2007, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the United States economy had officially entered a recession.   That diagnosis was confirmed throughout 2008 as there was a net loss of jobs every month last year—the first time there had been 12 months of consecutive net losses since 1982.  The economy lost a net 3.1 million jobs in 2008, with over 50% of those losses occurring in the last quarter (October-December) of the year .  November, December and January all had the highest single-month job losses since 1974 and by December of 2008 the employment-population ratio was 61%, 1.7 percentage points lower than a year earlier.  Overall unemployment rose from 4.9% in December of 2007 to 7.2% a year later and for blacks it jumped from 8.9% to 11.9%.  The “real” unemployment rate, which accounts for the unemployed as well as marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, grew from 8.7% at the end of 2007 to 13.5% by the end of 2008.  Over the course of those 12 months, 3.6 million more people were unemployed and by December, almost a quarter of them had been unemployed 27 weeks or longer.  In January 2009 there were another 655,000 jobs lost, unemployment rose to 7.6%, and the share of the population employed fell to its lowest level since 1986.  These statistics indicate that 2009 could be even worse than 2008 for those in the labor market.