In article , Ed Huntress
says...

... There is still no clear answer to which element
is driving which part of our unemployment these days: normal business-cycle
recession, running off excess capacity that reflected an *abnormal* economic
bubble, increased productivity, or low-cost imports. All of them are in play
at once.

Plus, the actual *unemployement* statistics seem to be
saying, there really isn't that much. Unemployement, that
is.

One set of statistics are saying that jobs are going away,
another one says that everyone who wants a job, has one.

Either a) this is complete bull****, b) the truth is somewhere
in the middle, or c) that's quite true.

For (a) above one might think that the folks who tote up the
actual unemployment stats have been pressured for years to
do things like remove workers from that catagory if they've
been out of work for more than a certain period, these being
the 'discouraged' workers, who are not getting counted. Or
workers who are 'self employed' now, a catagory that is much
on the rise, because they've lost their real jobs. Or one
of those recently quoted studies where the end result was
that some of the layoffs recently have been 'permanent' ie.
the workers were simply fired. And that it takes a lot longer
to re-hire fired workers than ones just put on plant slowdown,
because one needs to find jobs for them. Etc.

For (b) one can consider Gary's comments about how the
workforce really is shrinking, so both could be true at
the same time, to some degree. The idea that we maybe
don't need as many jobs as we thought we did.

(C)? That everything is just hunky-dory, and it will all
work out? I'm not betting on that one.

And it's percolated throughout our society. What most of us know about
economics is what we read in the papers or see on TV. And most of the people
who write about it in the popular press, or who read the news about it on
TV, have no idea what they're talking about.

Another good reason not to watch TV.

Jim

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