Harry Reid celebrates the most recent jobs report. How out-of-touch can this guy get ?!

Keep in mind two things: this is not a number of "new unemployed." Rather, Reid is talking about the number of job opportunities cut by business. In Febrary of '08, the number of jobs cut was 690,000. This February, the total is 36,000. Good news as Reid supposes ?? Not really. First, the month before the total was 20,000. Secondly, job cuts are down from a year ago because there are only so many jobs that can be cut. Of course job cuts are down.

There are three jobs related totals reported on a regular basis:

The jobs report: this is a measure of the number of job positions cut by employers over and agains the total number of jobs created. 4 million netl job opportunities have been cut by business. These are jobs that no longer exist. This is not a people number. We need to adding 120,000 jobs per month to keep even with the number of folks coming onto or back into the job scene. Contrary to Reid's ridiculous assertion, this number is never a good number if it is a negative total.

"Unemployment" numbers: this month, that percentage remains at 9.7% . This number measures the number of people currently on paid unemployment benefits. At 10%, the total number of American drawing benefits was 16 million. That total has dropped a bit. Did they go back to work? No, the total number of jobs available decreased by 36,000. This is the number celebrated by Reid. Employment is not up. People have just given up trying to find a job.

Total unemployed is a third category. That percentage rose from 16.5 % last month to 16.8%. This is the real unemployment number we all should be looking to. It represents about 27 million Americans.
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