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Economy Title: Washington's employment bubble bursting Nearly 30,000 Washington-area workers joined the jobless ranks over the past two months as the unemployment rate ratcheted up almost an entire percentage point -- and all signs point to more bad news on the horizon. May and June's unemployment rate marked the first time this year the region saw upticks in joblessness, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And more job cuts are on the way, positioning Washington to have the worst job growth in a single year since the recession ended. "We're just catching up with the rest of the nation in terms of bad economic performance," said University of Baltimore economist Richard Clinch. "This region has been highly dependent on the federal government, which has been in delay mode ... and the national economy isn't growing so there's nothing to move us forward." More than 18,000 people filed for unemployment benefits in the Washington region in June, pushing the area's jobless rate up to 6.2 percent after hitting a 12-month low of 5.4 percent in April. June's newly unemployed represent a 64 percent increase over May's 11,000 new unemployment filings and bring the number of unemployed people in the D.C. area to about 194,000. A separate report released Wednesday shows more job losses are to come. Washington, Maryland and Virginia are on pace to match last year's job cuts by October, combining for more than 37,000 through July, according to the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The increase in job cuts is in direct opposition to the rest of the country. "In fact, job cuts have dropped for the rest of the county by 8 percent [over] last year's total through July," said John Challenger, chief executive officer of the Chicago consulting firm. "The resolve of the country to cut the size of the government is going to affect the Washington, D.C., metro [area] disproportionately." The result is a shaky future for the region's more than 300,000 federal workers and contractors, who have reaped the benefits of federal spending more than any state in the nation, according to the Greater Washington Initiative. June also marked the first time Washington didn't post an annual job gain, losing 2,700 jobs compared with June 2010. Meanwhile, other major cities like Boston and New York posted annualized gains. Federal workers said the cuts already had them tired of hiring freezes. "It's horrible," said Carolyn McDonald, who has spent 40 years working for various agencies. "A lot of people are putting in for government positions and not even being considered or looked at." In Maryland, employers said they planned to lay off or did lay off more than 6,700 workers in July -- about 900 shy of the state's total for all of last year. Challenger said layoffs in July were largely because of cuts in traditionally stable industries like pharmaceuticals, retail and computer technology. A&P/Superfresh, Allen Family Foods and Lockheed Martin Corp. have all laid off hundreds of Maryland employees. Last year the federal government was a culprit as D.C. lost thousands of temporary Census Bureau workers. Clinch said the uncertainty created by the upcoming federal spending cuts will hit the area's contractors the hardest. An atmosphere of uncertainty has been hanging over Washington for the better part of a year between the near-government shutdown in April and the threat of the United States defaulting on its debt over the past several weeks. "Everything slowed down because no one knew what was going on," Clinch said. "A lot of contracting activity has been delayed so we're getting a short-term effect in Washington." Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, said contractors are just looking for a little predictability these days. "Anything we can do to urge some stability in the process," he said. "I think our members would accept less [money] to know more."
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The parasites have killed the host, now even they're starting to die off.
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