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HappySqurriel on 11 July 2009
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akuma587 said:
HappySqurriel said:

I kind of have to wonder about how many people are being mislead by the spin that is being put on employment numbers rather than understanding the reality of the situation ... The spin is (essentially) that things are getting worse for people at a slightly slower rate which must mean that things are getting better.

How anyone can think that unemployment is bottoming at a time when continuing claims on unemployment benefits have reached an all time high (since the statistic was measured in 1967), where first time claims are over 500,000 per week, and the only reason the unemployment rate is growing at a slower rate is because people have given up on the possibility of finding a job?

All time high in actual numbers, not as a percentage. The country's population has grown a lot since this data started being measured, so your point really isn't relevant.

And the reason why it is important that jobs are being lost at a slower pace is because that is how economic trends typically work. As NJ5 was pointing out, things just don't change overnight. It took people about six months to a year to even figure out we were even in a recession in the first place.

One thing you don't seem to get is that the slower pace is not  significant ...

If we were talking about the economy losing jobs at 1/4 or 1/2 of the peak rate you might be able to make the claim that there has been a significant improvement in the economy and 6 months down the road the economy will start creating jobs at a faster rate than it is losing jobs. When you are talking about the economy bleeding jobs at 90% of the peak rate its kind of hard to argue that the economy has improved as much as companies have run out of "low lying branches" to cut and are being more selective with their layoffs.

When you factor in people who are asked to take pay cuts, asked to work fewer hours, or taken part time jobs to get some reliable income into the mix (who are all hurting but don't show up in the main unemployment statistics) its hard to look at the economy bleeding 550,000 jobs in a month rather than 600,000 as being a huge improvement.