Wall Street Protests

[orcus116]

Yeah, people don't seem to understand the concept of people without a job versus people who are attempting to get a job and have not found work yet. It's so tempting to try to use the former as a statistic when the latter is the more accurate and true one.

[Super Dude]

Well, there's the trouble of, with "haven't found work yet," how long till that person finds work? Because people who've been looking for three years without success can be included in that. Unless I'm just totally misunderstanding your point.

[Rathma]

Someone brought up a good point about the umemployment the other day. It's really a matter of "glass half full/glass half empty". Sure around 9% plus or minus is umemployed and that is definitely a number that needs to be worked on. That being said 90 to 91% percent of people who actively look for work are employed. That's really good.

The unemployment rate isn't a "half full/half empty" matter at all... 9% unemployment would be a positive achievement if 5 years back the same figure was at say18%, but that's not the case. The only way you can draw positive conclusions is if you compare it to something worse, like "hey at least it's not as bad as the Great Depression."

[orcus116]

What I'm getting at is the people who are appalled at the 9% number, not comparative to any other point in time.

[Rathma]

Well, Occupy Retail musta been a bit of a failure, apparently sales are up 6.6 per cent.

Pretty sure there was no "Occupy Retail" dude.

[Sigz]

There wasn't besides that one tard with a blog.

[Scheavo]

What I'm getting at is the people who are appalled at the 9% number, not comparative to any other point in time.

Some of that is because people are also not looking for work anymore - they've given up. If you've given up on finding a job, you're not technically counted as unemployed, even though you would work if you had the opportunity.

Though I think some of what you say is true. We don't need to think that every single person in a family needs a job.