from the Working Life blog:
Unemployment Is 15 Percentby Jonathan Tasini
Friday 03 of April, 2009
When you think about having a job, the logical person would consider that a situation where you were making enough money to pay your bills, and maybe save a bit. Anything less is not real employment. And by that measure, our unemployment figure is more than 15 percent.
So, each month, the media does a pathetic job in reporting unemployment figures--and today is no different. The New York Times:
The American economy shed another 663,000 jobs in March, the government reported Friday, bringing the toll of job losses during the recession to more than 5 million.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the national unemployment rate climbed to 8.5 percent from 8.1 percent in February, its highest levels in a quarter-century, as employers raced to cut their payroll costs. It was the 15th consecutive month of job losses.
How does the lazy-ass reporter arrive at that figure? Well, he simply rewrites the first paragraph of the Department of Labor's press release:
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline sharply in March (-663,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.
.............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=12983