Unemployment Rate Drops
August 7, 2009 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
It became clear earlier this week that the pace of job losses in this country is slowing . And today, new numbers were released describing the unemployment rate . Many forecasters and analysts had expected the rate to rise to 9.6%. However, the rate actually dropped to 9.4% from 9.5%. This is very encouraging for many who have been concerned about the seemingly-inexorable march toward 10% employment . This news is providing a 
measure of comfort to many, and some optimism. Yes, jobs are still being lost. But not as quickly as before, and leaders are expressing the optimistic hope that maybe jobs will start being added to the economy in 2010.
Confidence is high enough at this point that stock market opened higher today . The Dow has rallied to well above 100 points, and this is encouraging a number of business types. While this type of rally isn’t all that helpful for small businesses and those that are not publicly traded, this sort of confidence tends to spread.
As long as it last, however. We still have the whole 3rd quarter to go. It will be a few months yet before we have a solid idea of whether or not the business climate in the U.S. is truly making improvements.
Image source: David55King via Flickr
How does the country lose an additional 247K jobs and employment somehow magically goes up a tenth of one percent? Only when twice that number get too discouraged to look for work and are removed from the count of the civilian labor force. I think the true unemployment rate in the country is somewhere between 13-15%.