I'm sorry, this is nonsense

Will lots of people lose their jobs this ycoming year? Yes, I'm sure they will, sadly. However, this really is nonsense:
More than 1,600 people will lose their jobs every day during 2009 as the British economy sheds workers at the fastest pace for nearly 20 years, personnel managers say today......

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development forecasts that 600,000 workers face redundancy during 2009......

John Philpott, the CIPD's chief economist said early 2009 will be the worst period for redundancies since 1991......

Now assume that those numbers are true, it's still nonsense. For they are entirely ignoring the fact that there is a huge job churn in the private sector anyway. One estimate (a high one, to be sure) is that one in seven private sector jobs is destroyed each year, that's around 3 million of them. If we were talking about 600,000 extra redundancies then that might be an interesting number, but here they're saying that 600,000 is going to be the total number. Which is, as I say, nonsense.

Now I have no doubt that unemployment is going to rise substantially in coming months (possibly even, although I certainly hope not, in coming years) but the above numbers show us one very important thing. Recessions aren't about people losing their jobs for as we can see, millions lose their jobs every year. No, recessions are about when those who have lost them cannot find others and thus find themselves on the dole.

Another way of putting it. Recessions are not because job destruction rises, for that is simply a part of what Schumpeter called the gales of creative destruction. Rather, recession is because job creation falls.