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How did the housing market effect the unemployment rate to go up?

Can someone explain to me how the housing market caused the job market to end up in the crapper? How did the housing market effect the unemployment rate to go up to almost 10%?

Public Comments

1. That's "affect", not "effect".
2. Well i don't think it was housing alone but basically real estate values are what companies consider assets. And when housing values plummet so do the companies' assets, and the less assets they have the less money they're willing to spend on jobs.
3. People are living on borrowed money leveraged by inflated housing prices. No house value, no money, no purchases, no business, no jobs
4. I work in the housing industry so I can explain this: Millions of people lost their jobs by: Building supplier layoffs. Contractor layoffs. Home builder layoffs (meaning office staff and job site supervisors) The bottom line is that millions who work as fabricators, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, concrete workers, landscapers and sales staff lost their jobs. I was lucky to keep mine (at a reduced pay rate). Thumbs down by folks who know nothing of the construction industry.
5. They quit building houses, which is quite labor intensive. All those carpenters and laborers are out of work; including all the guys who work for companies that manufacture, transport and supply everything that new houses are made out of! That's a lot of people!
6. You can always tell when school starts up again and those government class teachers give more than "yes" and "no" questions. In past downturns, it was a resurgent U.S. housing market that led the American economy out of the recessionary doldrums. But U.S. investors shouldn’t expect history to repeat itself this time around. On the other hand, however, surging unemployment is keeping buyers on the sidelines, and lenders remain reluctant to loosen their purse strings, and are forcing borrowers to meet stricter credit-quality standards. The bottom line: The U.S. housing market appears to face a long, hard climb out of the biggest hole it’s occupied since the Great Depression.
7. The housing market is not the reason why the economy and unemployment rate are horrible. It is from banks lending out way to much money to people that could never afford to pay it back which makes the people unable to afford their homes and other things like cars which results in the decline of sales. The decline of sales then forces companies to downsize. The only affect the house market has had on the job market is that nobody is building new houses because nobody has money which causes a decline in construction workers.
8. This is pretty complicated, I hope i can explain it. People went out and bought houses, expensive houses that they can not afford. As people are paying their house payments, they are a little short on the other bills. People use credit cards to make up the difference of what they need to get by. Credit cards companies start not getting the payments from people because they just don't have enough money. Credit card companies get lots of money from the government and then raise interest rates to unbelievable numbers to near 30%. People can no longer afford to make house payments because of the credit card payments. Bankruptcy gets filed or people have their homes taken away. Banks now have a house that nobody can afford so they drop the cost hoping to resell and people that can afford their payments property value drops. Less homes are being built because all of these houses are sitting empty. Job market shrinks sending the country deeper into recession. Moral of the story is, do not buy more than you can afford or spend more money than you take in. Do you think the federal government should listen to this?