March numbers are out:

Nationwide, the unemployment rate is 8.5%.

Below is an updated chart showing job losses in this recession compared to five prior recessions.

Robert Reich, Clinton economist, doesn't mince words.  "It's a depression", he blogs.

The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who'd rather be working full time, it's now up to 15.6 percent. One in every six workers in America is now either unemployed or underemployed.

This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a Depression. And the only way out is government spending on a very large scale. We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers. Use money to build up Main Street, and the future capacities of our workforce.

Lovely.  it's even worse locally.

In North Carolina, the unemployment rate is at 11.3% (February numbers, just released), up 1% from January.  The unemployment rate went up in every one of NC's 100 counties, except Caswell County, which went down a mere 0.2% from 13.2% to 13%. 

In Forsyth County, the unemplyment rate is at 10%, up 1.2% from January's 8.8%.

Winston-Salem's unemployment rate rose to 10.4%, up from 9.2%.