Obama Has His Hands Full With Economy

For example...

Planned job cuts highest in 5 years

October was another awful month for jobs. Two key employment reports released Wednesday showed the largest number of planned job cuts in nearly five years, with private sector jobs falling by the largest amount in nearly seven years.

Job cut announcements by U.S. employers soared to 112,884 in October, up 19% from September's 95,094 cuts, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. That was the highest number of pink slips handed out since January 2004. Layoffs last month were up 79% from October 2007, when 63,114 job cuts were announced.

Separately, payroll manager ADP said Wednesday that the private sector lost a seasonally adjusted 157,000 jobs last month - more than six times September's decrease and the largest drop since December 2001.

The Department of Labor's monthly unemployment report on Friday is expected to show that 200,000 jobs were lost in October and that the unemployment rate grew to 6.3% from 6.1% a month earlier.