Today's report on unemployment is being spun as such good news by the government and the media. There was a "burst" of hiring according to the AP; unemployment only went up because of all the people who came back into the labor force according to many of the other news outlets. The truth is something quite different. This was not a bad report, but it was far from a good one. Perhaps the key statistic is this, the rate of so-called underemployment, that is the rate of people unemployed or who have just given up looking for work climbed to 17.1%. The news articles buried this fact near the end of the articles with statements like this one from the AP: "Counting people who have given up looking for work and part-timers who would prefer to be working full time, the so-called underemployment rate rose to 17.1 in April. That's close to the record high of 17.4 percent in October and shows just how difficult it is for jobseekers to find work." Such good news!!
What this all means is that the economy is not creating jobs fast enough to lower the rate of unemployment and the numbers of the unemployed are going up. When this changes in a sustained manner, it will be good news. Until then, it is nice that things are not getting worse, but better -- I think not.
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