Reply #27: Yes, actually, it was [View All]

Looking at the jobs shed and the numbers that left the workforce, we're running along what expectations have been. At least, what my expectations have been. I look at these numbers every day as part of my job, and so far the pattern is about where we figured (we being my colleagues).

The problem with these conversations is that the numbers are calculated dishonestly. If we added in the all of the job losses and all of the workers who exited the labor pool in the last month, that 9.4% would be much closer to 10. Since we don't count those, the official government number came down a tenth of a percent - even though the job situation worsened.

Does that make sense to you? That there were job losses, yet the unemployment figure went down?

It's very frustrating attempting an economic discussion when so much dialogue consists of "I read it on the internets" and "But this is what the government told me the number is."

Both sources stopped caring about the real economic numbers quite some time ago. The rest is politics. Well, I'm not interested in making politicians look good or bad. The people in my business need to know what they'll be dealing with down the road, so we try to look behind all the spin and get at the truth of the matter.

The truth is, we're stalling, that it was expected, and that the real make-or-break test of the administration's economic policies is yet to come.