http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/07/news/economy/jobs_july/index.htm?postversion=2009080708

Two facts in this article:

• A quarter of a million more people lost there jobs.
• Less people are trying to find jobs.

Now, there are a lot of ways to look at this information. None of it is really good. However, a convenient byproduct of more people giving up on looking for work vs losing there jobs, is the unemployment rate drops.

So the only thing you could get out of this that looks good on paper, is unemployment drops from 9.5% to 9.4%. 

That's not the story, that's just statistics playing tricks. But, if you read the article, it should like a good thing.

God I hate the media.

Meh americans.

If You lived beyond iron curtain you would know that :
"If the facts are against us, even worse for them"

But actually i don't see anything wrong in this article :) So either i don't understand it or you :)

The problem with the article, and how the numbers have been presented across the media, is there is (almost) no discussion on the fact that since the economy continued to lose jobs over July the drop in the unemployment rate is caused (primarily) from people giving up on finding a job at a faster rate than people are currently losing their jobs. Essentially, the job market has become so bad in enough places that more than 200,000 people thought that it was virtually impossible to find a job las month and gave up looking.

There are signs of improvement in the economy, lower than predicted job losses is one of them.

I don't know how your government measures unemployment though, here its based on how many people are on the benefit, can somebody explain to me how you guys measure it?

Shouldn't this thread be titled "Why can't the media call it like I see it?"

Fairly off topic: I have a question for Mafoo and Squirrel, since you are both pretty negative on Obama. Do you think that this is all attributable to him? I mean should this have all swung around in 8 months if his programs were going to work? Can we call him a failure already? I've found that the ecomony swings pretty much up and down almost regardless of who is in charge and the administration can only affect the lengths and depths of the lows and heights of the highs, but those swings are MUCH longer than 8 months long. I need help on what we're thinking he has failed at so far.
Edit: Just having fun with the first bit, no offense intended guys.

Zlejedi,
To use an extreme analogy to show the point....

Let's say I run a food bank, and 100 people need food. Each month month the number of people who can't feed themselves grows by 10.

So the next month, I would need to feel 110 people. But let's say in the same month, 12 people starved to death. So, it went from 100 people needed to be fed, to 98 (100 + 10 new - 12 who died).

If that happened, would you agree with an article that said "Good news! the number of people who need to be fed this month went down 2%!"?

I sure wouldn't

I couldn't agree more. The media exists for only 2 reasons, to make a profit and push a political/social agenda. The sooner everyone realises this and stops taking news reports at face value the better off everyone will be. The way science is used in the media particularly annoys me. I've lost count of the times some obscure study from an unaccredited source is passed off as 'scientific fact' and used to prop up an argument.

The problems we're facing today have little to do with Obama, and he has almost no ability to prevent them or lessen them, they're caused by decades of the government being overly involved in the economy and being unable to understand that a free market that isn't hampered by high taxes, high inflation, rampant corruption and a large debt load will correct itself.

The problems will will face in a couple years will have a lot to do with Obama because few economies can perform well when they're hampered by high taxes, high inflation, rampant corruption and a large debt load which (with the exception of corruption which hasn't changed much) have all been made dramatically worse by Obama.

I do not think the economy failing is Obama's fault. I also don't think he can fix it, and all the things he is trying to do to fix it, is making it worse.

The economy is going to go up and down. It's just the way it is. The way this county has worked of late (last 100 years), is when things are good, we leave it alone. When things are bad, we do what we can to try and make it not bad.

That never works, and what I think we are seeing today, is the beginning of the end. Government is again, trying to stop the bleeding, and it going to kill us.

The rewards of a system with risk is always better then the rewards of a system without risk. You cant have the same rewards, and remove the risk. This is what Obama is promising people. He wants the security of socialism, and for Americans to keep the incredible benefits capitalism provides.

You can't have it both ways.

And economies suffering from a depression suffer even worse. It is entirely plausible that without the stimulus and the financial sector being bailed out (especially Fannie and Freddie) that the economy would have nose-dived far worse than it did.

Edit: @Mafoo. A lot of Europe already has the benefits that both provide. Social democracy is a valid philosophy.