The good news this morning is that the nation’s unemployment rate dropped three tenths of one percent from 10.0 to 9.7.
However, it has been discovered that the statistics of how many people have lost their jobs since the recession began in December 2007 was underestimated by approximately a million people! 🙁
It was thought that the total was about 7.2 million people, while now it is believed to be 8.4 million.
This is bad news, but at least no one can claim that the Obama Administration is trying to cover up the bad news. And there is some hope with the unemployment rate down one half of one percent since its high point of 10.2 percent three months ago.
However, it is still true that lowering that unemployment rate is essential for the Democrats as they face the challenge of the midterm congressional elections this coming November.
I saw this good news in the Wall Street Journal this morning. The article was confusing. It said that more people lost jobs in January, but the unemployment rate went down.
From http://www.bls.gov, I found the seasonally adjusted and non seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for December 2009 and January 2010. The seasonally adjusted rates went from 10.0% to 9.7%. This is very good news. However, the non seasonally adjusted unemployment rate went from 9.7% in December 2009 to 10.6% in January. This means that .9% less people had jobs in January versus December.
The seasonal adjustment is because many people are employed during the holidays in temporary positions.
While it’s sad news that more people were unemployed in January v.s. Decmeber, it is reassuring that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is better than last month.