Gold prices have moved up $9.50 an ounce today to $1,114.0o an ounce. As the recession has hit the dollar hard, gold prices have been steadily moving higher, and it looks to close out the first quarter with its sixth consecutive quarterly gain.

The dollar has been pretty weak, and continued to move lower today on news that the economy shed more jobs during March that analysts had forecast.

The 6 quarter streak for rising gold prices is the longest gold rally since 1979.

According to a poll by National Association for Business Economics, 80% of economists that it polled stated that they believe the recession has ended and the economy is once again expanding.

While it is encouraging to hear that the economy may be starting to expand, we still have to pay attention to two factors that are going to keep a recovery moving slowly: high unemployment and a large federal debt.

Unemployment is what is on the minds of most Americans, the majority of which have either felt the pain of losing their job, or know someone that has. September unemployment was 9.8%, and is expected to continue to climb, and will probably break through the 10% mark earlier next year. Until we start to see those numbers fall it will be hard to convince anyone that the economy is back in good shape.

Analysts expect to see unemployment break through 10% in the first quarter of next year, and then slowly start to recede back down towards 9.5% by the end of 2010. Even if we do see unemployment fall to “only” 9.5% that still means that there is going to be a lot of pain out there as American’s continue to worry about the jobs. The recovery is not really going to take off until consumer confidence and spending start to return to normal, and it will be hard for that to happen while nearly 1 out of 10 people are looking for work.

The markets all traded relatively flat today despite the encouraging news.

The currently unemployment level is now running at 9.8%, highest since June 1983.

With an additional 263,000 additional job losses during the month, the total number of Americans out of work now sits at 15.1 million, and gives further evidence that the recession continues to inflict pain.

Looking at total unemployment, the unemployment rate for the country rose from 4.8% up to 5.1%. This could be one of the biggest signals that the country has already been contracting. This is the highest rate that the country has seen since back in September 2005 when the country was hit with massive Gulf hurricanes.

There was no one single sector that can be blamed for last month’s jumps. Unemployment rates rose in several sectors, including construction, manufacturing, retailing, financial services and various business services. On the other side of the coin, there were a couple sectors that did see some gains during the month. These included education and health care.

There is a still a pretty big debate taking lace over whether or not the country is, or at least will be, in a recession before the current situation plays itself out. Some have argued that even though GDP growth has not dropped for two consecutive quarters that the country has already slipped into a recession. Others are holding steady, and will not even mention a possible recession unless we see the true definition of a recession play itself out.

Before today’s numbers were released, analysts had been expecting to see a drop of around 50,000 jobs in March, so it was no real surprise that unemployment rose, it was just a surprise how much the number did indeed rise. This was the largest one month jump in job losses since March 2003.

Are we seeing the first signs of a true recession hitting the country? Only time will tell, but this week was the first time that Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke formally stated that there was a good chance the country was headed into a formal recession. What he plans to do to fight such a possibility was not mentioned, but it led Wall Street to believe that we will be seeing more interest rate cuts later this month when the Federal Reserve meets again.

The total number of unemployed people in America is now sitting at 7.8 million and rising.