The release of US non-farm payroll data is like a motorway pile-up. Everyone knows it means pain and suffering. Yet it is impossible to look away. Friday’s car crash was particularly nasty. The monthly jobs loss, the biggest since 1974, was far worse than expected. The overall report showed clearly that the US economy was suffering widespread internal bleeding.

It is now clear that the labour market has been in dire straits since before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers prompted the financial market meltdown. Downward revisions to September’s job losses, now more than 400,000, mean the economy was already shedding jobs at a rate last seen in 2000. Of the 1.9m jobs lost since last December – now officially dubbed the start of this recession – two-thirds vanished in the past three months across a broad range of sectors.