Update: Pelosi says 20,000 jobs lost & million giving up on work = Stimulus SUCCESS! ALSO FOX explains the numbers further
20,000 job were lost in January while the overall unemployment rate fell to 9.7%.EVERYBODY CELEBRATE!! Wait, the prediction for January had the economy gaining 5,000 jobs and overall unemployment jumping to 10.1%. Huh? So the estimate was that we would gain more jobs and that would result in higher unemployment. We lost 20,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate went down. Yes, something does smell fishy… and it is not fish.
For the answer, you have to read a little deeper into the numbers:
<blockquote>A sharp increase in the number of people giving up looking for work helped to depress the jobless rate. The number of ‘discouraged job seekers’ rose to 1.1 million in January from 734,000 a year ago.</blockquote>
Yes, you read that right, 1.1 MILLION people stopped looking for work in January. It is that bad, they just said “you know what, not working and looking for work are almost exactly the same thing.”
OK, so maybe hold off on the celebrating.
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