Katrina, Rita Cost 500,000 Jobs

The U.S. government has stated that more than 500,000 people have lost their jobs due to the devastation inflicted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. When the Labor Department released its weekly jobless report, 24,000 claims came from people who have been put out of work thanks to the hurricanes, bringing the claims related to the storms to 502,000 since September 3. Before the hurricanes, U.S. employment was shown to be stabilizing at healthy levels. As a whole, weekly claims for aid now seem to be falling and in the case of hurricane related claims, leveling off. Now that Hurricane Wilma has hit Florida, hurricane related claims may rise again, meaning that more people will have been put out of work. There is really no way to protect the job market from this; people have no control over the weather. This would be a hard thing to predict, but I'm just curious as to how long it will take the labor economy to stabilize again, and how difficult it will be for employees to find new jobs in the wake of the storms. Will the job market stabilize itself, or will it require much more government intervention?