It was announced yesterday that the job numbers for October 2009 were, “NOT AS BAD AS EXPECTED”. What that translates to is that ONLY 190,000 jobs were lost that month. That the economy is mending slowly. THAT IS BETTER THAN EXPECTED? Only 6 months ago over 500,000 jobs were lost in a single month. So see, things are getting better, or so they say…
This is the new spin on some very bad economic news. Sooner or later we may have a statistic that only 1000 people lost their jobs in a single month, which would be great. But what if those people were the last 1000 people working?
Over 16 million people are out of work, over 10% of the work force. Even though that means that 90% of the workforce is still working, here is another statistic, with a little spin, to look at: If all of those 16 million people, while employed, ONLY earned $100 per week than that means that 1.6 billion dollars has been removed from the working economy. 1.6 billion dollars per week, that’s over 75 billion dollars per year!
It has been replaced, for the most part, with unemployment benefits. However, that is “NOT AS BAD AS EXPECTED”, imagine how big the number would be if all of those people were earning more than $100 per week.
