I always believe the numbers are cooked by the Obama team. Forget the stock market as an indicator it is the unemployed that will tell us if we are recovering. It is now slipping away from the democrats. I believe unemployment is higher than 20% in some areas and will rise on a national basis. On top of that with the passage of bills the dems want cost of goods and energy will rise on the people out of work. Depression is coming and Obama can't hide.

Look not at what is being said, but at what has been/is being done. Actions speak louder than words.
"Stimulus" money has gone to pay off election supporters of Obama, for maintaining jobs of socialist university employees, or for other frivolous pursuits.. Billions lost and unaccounted for.. debts to hang on our children and grandchildren. Some say Obama is trying to help the economy; but what is he is not?
What if the goal is to impoverish America, decimate the military, and make us ever more vulnerable to Islamic takeover? Look at what has happened in that model the Democrat(ic)s want to follow.. old Europe.
Barack HUSSEIN Obama... MMMM.. MMMM.. MMMM!

FTA
The new benchmark is a sign of just how much damage financial crises tend to inflict.

Financial crises are caused by people Mr. Leonhardt. They are called socialists.

This is exactly what I have been telling anyone that would listen for the past 3 months. The system of dropping people off of the unemployment rolls after a short time
yields a totally phony number. They say "but that's the way Bush did it". Under Bush we had full employment. If someone did not find a job after a couple of months the chose not to work. When we have huge unemployment and there are no jobs it yields a false number!
I am well over 60 and I have never seen things so bad in my lifetime! Almost everyone I know has been affected by the Obama Disaster. Many of my friends have been completely wiped out after a lifetime of hard work. This is also what Obama and the other Chicago communists want. Their program is to bankrupt the USA with social and health expenditures.
They will be in control, to rewrite the rules in every aspect of the way we live. These are not simply liberals. They plan on wiping out any opposition.

If our schools still taught American History, everyone would understand that spending begins with Congress.

It should be so simple to look at the 2006 Congress and see where this began.

Ole Obama might be trying to shove it to America but in the process he is killing his base.

Turns out "trickle down" does work, and there ain't much tricklin down right now.

Keep preaching! Wake up people even if you are irritating them. When I have people do an internet search using "global warming gestapo" they watch Congressman Scalise read from the House floor the words of the cap and trade bill the House passed. It is the section whereby there is a Federal Housing Code and if a "green Jobs" (read ACORN/SIEU) person must approve your house BEFORE you can sell it! YOU CAN BE DECLARED AN ILLEGAL OCCUPANT OF YOUR OWN HOME AND FINED DAILY IF IT HAS A SINGLE INFRACTION. I.E. insulation thickness, old fridge, etc. When people see this video clip, they go anti Obama in a split second. TRY IT!

I am so angry about this utterly manufactured "crisis." None of this was necessary.

We have millions of barrels of available oil and natural gas that we could use for energy independence. It's being withheld from us in order to force us into 3rd world status.

Lower taxes allow people to determine their own lives by spending it on what is important to them. It's called free enterprise. It's called CAPITALism.

Congress is supposed to represent US not rule us. It is not their money, it is our money, and yet we have allowed them to ruin our economy and our lives.

As a small business operator I will tell you the Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda is preventing me from hiring any more employees.

Why would I do that in the face of a National Health Care Plan, Cap and Trade, a ton of new tax bills and allowing Bush tax cuts to expire?

More employees are an unknown with all the above legislation "in-process" that I can't even estimate it's effects on my business.

Small business is an engine for jobs, but only when we are "CERTAIN" what our future will bring. A mis-step by us means DEATH!

Very alarming comments:

Most economists predict that the rate will in fact begin to fall next year, largely because of the federal government’s aggressive response — fiscal stimulus, interest-rate cuts and a variety of creative steps by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.

Interest-rate cuts? Where? And the thought of more "stimulus" and a "variety of creative steps" by the FED and TR is very scary. This is meant to be hopeful?

...President Obama signed a bill to extend unemployment benefits and a tax credit for home buyers, and said that he was looking at ways to enact more stimulus.

Even more alarming; he's deliberately keeping these people dependent, then is going to do more of the same thing that made them this way.

He cannot be permitted to do these things. It's insane, but only if actual improvement is the goal. When the real goal is to destroy the economy to suspend democracy and the free-market, Obama's plans are doing precisely what they are designed to do.

This is just evil.

The NY Times continues to be perpelxed. This recession is 'different', but they cannot figure out why. The fact that a committed socialist in the White House is discouraging business activity never enters their minds.

Barney and Dodd are still punching thru ACORN loans. When the next wave of bankruptcies hit the powder will have been shot at this mess.No defense and we're goners. Then comes higher interest rates to cure the rampant inflation. Dollar will be $.25 to the euro.

OK, is it my imagination or wasn't there an announcement earlier in the week or last week (before Tuesday's elections) that the unemployment numbers were actually getting BETTER? Anyone else hear the same thing?

That 10.2% number does not count those whose benefits have expired. So it is just Smoke & Mirrors.

It may be better to some when job losses are lower than they were months ago, but this still means that more people are out of work each month. Some economists say that sometime in 2010 we will have jobs gains, but one recent study said that the US will take 10 years to get back to 2007 employment levels (and that's providing there is no recession during that time). My own feeling is that the idiots in Washington have seriously broken our economy and that we won't see anything good until we fire the people who caused the problem.

#15, maybe that is what I heard, that new jobless claims were lower? I agree that Washington is doing a great job of screwing things up--it almost appears as though they are trying to do as much damage as possible before they're all voted out in 2010 (unfortunately, we must still wait until 2012 to complete the "moron exchange program"). It'll be a while before we can undo the damage, but getting adults back in charge is the first step.

I am so sick of some who have jobs complaining about those collecting unemployment. They act like these people are having a vacation rather than worrying about bills there is not enough money to pay. It seems to me that the majority would rather have a job to support their families. The government does not create jobs and is doing everything possible at this point to see that the private sector does not create them.

I heard some fool yesterday say this was a sign the economy is picking up steam. People are giddy about the possibility of a hiring boom and re entering the job market. Like the poster above said, small business isn't going to hire and isn't going to risk capital. The only hiring in 2010 will be census workers.

I graduated with three bachelor's degrees (after my hubby left me with two kids to care for -- child support, but no alimony). I had been a stay-at-home Mom. I thought, with education, I'd be able to get a decent job so I didn't have to slave away in a factory.

HA!

Now, I'd LOVE to find a factory job. And I'm stuck with $40,000 in school loans.

I've been unemployed for most of the last year and a half, but I'm not counted in the number they publish. If you can't find a job fresh out of college, you don't qualify for unemployment. If, as happened to me, your job cuts your hours drastically for a few months before laying you off, you don't qualify. Thanks, Obama!

http://sayingnicedoggie.blogspot.com

http://sayingnicedoggie.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-white-house-war-with-reality-we.html

Hilarious report of distorted/ignorant statistics.

My favorite part of this is how every month the economists are "surprised" by the bad employment numbers.

What do they think is the reason that so many mortgages are in default? Slow mail holding up the payments? What do they think is the reason that retail is tanking? What do they think is the reason that existing home sales are down and overall home prices are WAY down?

It's the JOBS, stupid.

#19: find the place you'd most like to work at and volunteer there for free. They don't have enough money to hire people right now, but when they do, they'll have somebody who is qualified and knows the business. If they don't hire you when the get money, you'll at least have the experience it takes to get hired someplace else. Be honest about what you are doing. You can still send out resumes while you do this.

#19, and some others, the unemployment figure is not derived from the unemployment rolls. It is derived by survey. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

"Because unemployment insurance records relate only to persons who have applied for such benefits, and since it is impractical to actually count every unemployed person each month, the Government conducts a monthly sample survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940, when it began as a Work Projects Administration project."
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

Re my previous post: I meant #14, NOT #19. Sorry!

How's all that moronic "Hope and Change" working out for all you dipwads that voted this guy in...just so you wouldn't be called a racist. Man, talk about your useful idiots!

I am in Michigan, and agree with this article. Everyone working at the company where I work has had their hours reduced. Some of us are working 20 hours per week, and the rest are working 32 hours per week. I have been on 20 hours (with benefits) since May 1. I think we are referred to as the "underemployed". We have also had two furlough weeks this year, when we are able to collect unemployment. We will probably have one more furlough week this year. I don't think anyone would choose unemployment. It doesn't pay very well!

Believing that the U6 17.5% is going to drop is foolish - revenues are down, why hire more workers to reduce profits, instead increase productivity - which is what is happening.

Of course that means fewer to buy hence a reduction in revenue ... you figure it out.

Inventory building is done in offtimes, not with new workers.

Last but hardly least - why hire new workers when you could be facing double digit increases in the health insurance area and who knows what thanks to crap and tax.

Go to your bookshelves, if you have any. Take down a book that addresses European or world history from about 1880 onward if you have such a thing. Read a little.

We know enough to know what works. Much more importantly, we know enough to know what doesn't work. We've been there and done that.

Pay attention you idiots!

Wealth is not a pile of stuff however big. It evaporates or rots away. Wealth lies in doing something creative with the big pile of stuff, sustaining it and making it larger. Confusing the temporary size of the pile of stuff with what it can produce is an error worthy only of Arab sheiks with gold-plated toilet seats or President-for-life Saddam Hussein's multitude of palaces.

Remember the first law of economics. Trade and capitalism are what people do WHEN YOU LEAVE THEM ALONE.

Hammersdad

The Obama dilemma: how to maintain a majority dependent (by ruining the economy) upon a Leftist-run State, while simultaneously maintaining, through all the misery, an edge in the electoral college every 4 years.

At some point, they have to resort to unconstitutional means.

Hey, it looks like barry's plan is working out as intended!

A never-ending crisis on which he and Rahm can capitalize.

The only kind of capitalism of which they approve.

#9 has nailed it. How many hundreds of thousands of businessmen are paralyzed because common sense tells them Obama and the Dems could make moves that would cost their companies dearly.

Talk about growth all you want, but I see the economy taking off only if Obama is perceived as being powerless.

Recessions, history shows, are not that difficult to deal with. Reducing taxes has always proven to be a good remedy. The fact that Obama and his economic advisors refuse to even think about prescribing the penicillin of tax cuts to our economy indicates we're in for at least another year of sickness.

Only if 2010's pre-election polls and other events present a strong signal that tax-cutting Republicans will retake Congress next year will business's hopes return and investment and rehiring begin to get into gear. ''Other events'' would be ObamaCare and Cap and Trade going down to ignominious defeat and no other expensive socialist experiments being added to the Congressional agenda to take their place. Would Nancy and Harry and Obama and Michelle allow their evil totalitarian plans to simply fade away? We will find out in the next thrilling episode of Barak Builds a Workers' Paradise. Stay tuned.

Even the higher number does not include people who take full-time jobs at poor wages just to pay the rent. Is that "unemployment"? I dunno, but when it takes you from $100k to $40k it's something that should be worried about, unless we're happy becoming a fast-food jobs nation.

17% is a accurate average for our area of the country. I know people who are investing out of the country because it's safer than investments here. They don't like to but feel there is no trusting this government. Thanks to Obama and his handlers.

Right. This is an average figure. In some areas, this number could easily be near thirty percent.

How's that hope and change working out?

If I could buy Euros for $.25 apiece I'd never stop. More likely, the Euro will go up to $2 or $3.

Moving from S.F. to Austin, I found millions of $ from S.F. had gone into building housing in Austin. If you had a choice where to do business, the choice would be obvious.

And if you had a choice to create a job in the U.S. or India, Mexico, Brazil, or anywhere else, where would you create it.

Every single one of Obama's positions or initiatives is bad for the economy. The time frame and the depth of the damage varies, but the accumulated effect is catastrophic.

The only real question is, "Will we recover?"

Many of my friends whose father's deserted them as very young children are passed 55 years old, have had to work all of their lives. They have married the wrong men, and are now alone. They have lost everything and are beginning to have health problems, with kids who want to move back in with them. Children and families living together is fine. Many grandparents have lived with us. That was by choice, not necessity.
This is all becoming dangerous.
Eerily dangerous for America.
Even Mr. RammiePie talks about it everyday, now. Unlike him.

#31.
It is a well known fact that obambi is powerless in the wookie's separate bed.

Just imagine how high it would be if Obama had not saved 34 trillion million bajillion jobs with ARRA?