“The skies are falling, the skies are falling”
One of the most closely watched and loudly reported statistics in the economy are the unemployment numbers in America, but only if they are on the rise. Would it not be nice to hear on a television program someone come on and say to us: “Here are the facts regarding the employment numbers in this country.” And then proceed giving us the complete picture. Since it does not happen, we will attempt to do so.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November 2008, the total labor force in the United States amounted to 164,947,000 of which 154,616,000 were employed, the difference being the current number of unemployed people, 10,331,000. This is an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent. Compared to the rates during the years from 2002 to 2007 when the rate was between 4.5 and 5.0 percent, this number is high. The question is, why are these increased unemployment number cause for major concern, after all, they represent only about slightly more than three million people? There are several reasons and they would require in-depth analysis but the media’s preferred focus on NEGATIVE NEWS is a major part and the driving force behind the constant drumbeat about how bad we are all off in this country. There are self-anointed experts called economists who just love nothing more than to forecast gloom and doom and unfortunately, they are getting the media’s attention and that is all we hear.
But if we take a moment and look at the numbers in totality, it is definitely not as bad. When one takes into consideration that it is a generally accepted fact for many decades that about four percent are considered permanently unemployable, the true number of unemployed jobseekers is 2.7 percent and that amounts to 4.5 million people. Surely, this is not desirable by any stretch and we feel genuine concern for the well-being of these folks but it does not mean that America is going down the tubes now, after all, nearly 155 million individuals are still working. OK then, what if unemployment goes to ten percent over the next six months or more? It would mean that the number of unemployed would increase to 16.5 million citizens, an increase of 6.2 million from now. It would be bad but it would still leave 148.5 million people employed. One would have to go back a few decades to compare equally dire times yet it would not mean that the ‘skies are falling‘, would it? Not when one considers that unemployment rates in major industrialized European countries have been hanging around for years near and even over ten percent.
We believe that there is a strong need for realistic reporting in the media, in fact, we, the citizenry should demand it. Instead of hearing about dire predictions for 2009 and the years after as well as comparisons to the ‘Great Depression’, we should be getting the facts, and nothing else. Why can a newspaper or business magazine not bring actual charts of total statistics as they are available from government sources? The only common sense answer to this question is that it must be so much more fun for the media membership to ‘scare the hell out of people’! Which brings us to the question: “Is that what the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press was intended for?” We don’t think so and we all should demand a correction in this matter. Give us the total picture and we are smart enough to figure out for ourselves where things stand and what might be ahead of us. And accordingly, people on an individual bases will make adjustments in their lives and spending habits, they will figure out ways how to cope. As terrible as facing unemployment is in reality, as a nation we always have found ways to cope and to deal with changes in the negative and we will survive the current economic downturn and come out ahead in the future. Consider Common Sense firmly believes that the skies are not falling in America!
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