Reuters reported last week that, "New claims for unemployment benefits in the United States fell more than expected last week, pointing to further healing in the nation's battered jobs market."
Are they kidding??
Are they kidding??Reviewing numbers, and talking to actual people, let's take a look at that statement..
Here are the latest statements, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
LATEST NUMBERS -- SEASONALLY ADJUSTED
- Unemployment Rate: 8.5% in Dec 2011
- Change in Unemployment Level: -226,000 in Dec 2011
- Change in Employment Level: +176,000 in Dec 2011
- Change in Civilian Labor Force Level: -50,000 in Dec 2011
- Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate: 64.0% in Dec 2011
- Employment-Population Ratio: 58.5% in Dec 2011
ANNUAL AVERAGES
- Unemployment Rate: 8.9% for 2011
- Unemployment Level: 13,747,000 for 2011
According to official numbers, unemployment is falling. Is this a statement like, "we've reduced the annual deficit?"
Politicians can make any stat sound good, and by "reducing the deficit," we are simply stating that we're going deeper and deeper into debt each day, but we didn't go quite as far today as we did yesterday. How about we reduce the debt, not the deficit?
Keep in mind that the figures above show the percentage of people who are actually collecting unemployment. What does that mean? The people who no longer qualify, gave up looking, or took a 75 per cent pay cut to get a job, are not included. The numbers do not count the self-employed, and how well are they doing?
Many workers have fallen from six-figure incomes to working for minimum wage. Some can't even find that. Foreclosures and homeless rates are still at record levels,
Unemployment is falling. The question that I want to raise here is this:
If you have found a job in the past four years, is it the job you want, a job at a level you had previously, a job that pays close to what you used to make?
Please enter your comments here. We really want to know. If enough people respond, we'll publish what we find in a new post later this month. And, good luck on your job search....
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