Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, says in this podcast that there is further confirmation that we are in a recession in Friday's unemployment report. Policymakers need to respond with a much more robust program of job creation and extended unemployment benefits than that being advanced by the Bush administration and conservatives.

In the podcast, Mishel puts these numbers [2] in context:

• The economy lost 22,000 jobs in April, but the employment picture was particularly bad in manufacturing and construction, which lost 110,000 jobs, and in retail trade, which was down 27,000 jobs.
• The number of persons working part time for economic reasons increased in April by 306,000 to 5.2 million. This level was 849,000 higher than in April 2007.
• The first-quarter gross domestic product [3] was reported earlier this week as growing at an annual rate of 0.6 percent, not nearly enough [4] to assure needed growth in job opportunities.