[rescue] OT: unemployment and eating...

[N.Miller]

On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 11:18 AM, Shannon wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 01:23:08PM -0700, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>
>> Well, not to be a prick (well, not a big prick anyway ;^) - you can't
>> track folks that have "given up even TRYING to look for work" - how
>> would you capture that?
>
> Agreed... but the government is issuing those numbers and claiming that
> things are better because unemployment is going down, when it really
> isn't.
>
> I don't think we are contesting that it is hard to track, but rather
> that the numbers are being misused.

And a lot of numbers are being ignored.  Announced layoffs
for July went up 43%--anybody hear that on the news anywhere?
It came from CNN:
Report: Planned reductions jump to highest level since April, as
jobless recovery continues.
August 5, 2003: 12:44 PM EDT
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer

They are using the term "jobless recovery" to describe the fact
that certain aspects of the economy are turning around, but there
is no parallel turn-around in the job market--so the "recovery"
is happening *without* jobs (i.e. "jobless").  This unfortunate
choice of terms makes it very easy to misread these articles.
Convenient, eh?

(I have the whole of the CNN article if anyone wants it.)

And here's a super-ugly article from Gartner for all us IT types
to contemplate:

<http://computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,83697,00.html?nlid=CAR>

=Nadine=