Monday, February 08, 2010

More People Have Jobs, Yet Unemployment Is Up?

Did you happen to catch the most recent jobs report coming from the government? First-time unemployment benefits requests went up 20,000 in January, yet unemployment dropped from 10% to 9.7%. What the heck? It turns out that the professionals are trying to figure out what is going on just as much as the rest of us, but did you know that those figures come from two different reports? I just recently learned that, myself. And government statistics get adjusted at least twice in the months after they are first issued, so the bottom line is that nobody actually knows what is going on. News reports sure could try to minimize the confusion, though.

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