The headline on the business page said, "Unemployment applications drop 6,000 last week."
The article indicated things are getting better. For headline readers (which are many) the news sounded good. But, as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.
The fact is applications for new unemployment compensation claims did drop that week, all the way down to 361,000 from 368,250 the previous week. The article also reported that the economy "created" 163,000 jobs in July. I was taught there was only one "Creator."
I've never been good at math, but I had trouble seeing good news in that article. If we're adding 163,000 jobs a month and more than 360,000 people are filing for unemployment pay every week....let's see, there are four weeks in a month....four times 360,000...you do the math.
Actually the unemployed, underemployed or those working for cash and not reporting the income are more than 25,000,000. This number is said to be very conservative. Yep! Things sure are getting better with this new math the media uses.
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