staring contest. summer ever at the movies. staring contest. go! captions paid for by nbc-universal television good evening. in joplin, missouri where they are still trying to reconcile who lived and who died from last weekend s powerful tornado, the death toll grew again today to at least 142, with a significant number of people still unaccounted for. with ten more victims found, including a teenager swept away just hours after his high school graduation, this is now the deadliest tornado season in the u.s. since 1947. at least 522 tornado deaths this year, from the upper midwest to the deep south. nbc s ron allen remains in joplin tonight for us and joins us right now with the latest. ron? reporter: good evening to you, lester. today town officials here said that the water is now safe to drink. and power has been restored to most parts of the city that are still standing but they are still counting their losses. about 100 people are still considered missing. some fa
captions paid for by nbc-universal television good evening. in joplin, missouri where they are still trying to reconcile who lived and who died from last weekend s powerful tornado, the death toll grew again today to at least 142, with a significant number of people still unaccounted for. with ten more victims found, including a teenager swept away just hours after his high school graduation, this is now the deadliest tornado season in the u.s. since 1947. at least 522 tornado deaths this year, from the upper midwest to the deep south. nbc s ron allen remains in joplin tonight for us and joins us right now with the latest. ron? reporter: good evening to you, lester. today town officials here said that the water is now safe to drink. and power has been restored to most parts of the city that are still standing but they are still counting their losses. about 100 people are still considered missing. some families still don t have a good idea of exactly what happened to their
katie couric. evening. katie s away tonight. we have decided to begin with troubling news about jobs and the impact that s having on our economic recovery. the government reported today that 125,000 jobs were lost in the economy last month, but the unemployment rate actually dropped from 9.7% to 9.5%. that s partly because the labor force shrank by more than 650,000 people and when people stop looking for work, the government drops them from its unemployment count. more than 14 million americans are unemployed and looking for a job. we asked senior business correspondent anthony mason to find out what s happening to the jobs. reporter: the numbers are disappointing, scott. they suggest that the recovery, which only a few months ago appeared to be picking up speed, now seems to be sputtering. american business was hiring in june, adding 83,000 jobs. but that s barely half what the economy needs just to keep pace with population growth. what do you think is happening? i thi
worrying employers include higher tax rates next year, the debt crisis in europe, and economic slowdown in china. even the b.p. oil spill. corporations which are flush with cash, they ve got great profits, they re just hesitant. they re sitting there and waiting. reporter: at the sprawling headquarters of furniture land south in north carolina, jason harris is being caution. we re not out of the woods yet. reporter: business has improved a bit this year. we re up 4% year to date. reporter: but they re holding off adding any new workers. we re not currently looking to hire on the operational side until our beth israelly starting to pick up. reporter: how a great a risk is there of us sliding into another recession? i think we re going to have a slower, choppy second half of the year. reporter: but tim pact of the last recession is lingering and profound. a pugh research survey out this week found that more than half of all adult workers have either lost their