Yesterday’s new “unemployment” figure proved its utter uselessness. After several months in a row of 200,000 new jobs created–remember when something north of 300,000 was considered barely adequate to keep up with population growth?–economists were confidently expecting more of the same as our “recovery” continues. (I will now place quotation marks around “recovery” and “unemployment,” just as I already do around “stimulus.”)
Instead, we got just 120,000 new jobs last month, or about half of what was expected. But wait! The “unemployment” figure actually went down, to 8.2 percent.
Why? Because so many job-seekers are so discouraged that they have given up looking for work–and so aren’t even counted in the statistics. The real (no quote marks needed) “unemployment” rate is a lot closer to 11 percent than it is to 8 percent. I don’t need to remind you that this is twice as high as it was under the evil George W. Bush.
Please tell me again why Barack Obama deserves a second term.
About Stan Guthrie
Stan Guthrie is an editor at large for Christianity Today magazine and for the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. His latest book is God's Story in 66 Verses. He also is author of All that Jesus Asks: How His Questions Can Teach and Transform Us, Missions in the Third Millennium: 21 Key Trends for the 21st Century, and A Concise Guide to Bible Prophecy. He is co-author of The Sacrament of Evangelism. Besides authoring, writing, and editing books, Stan is a literary agent, bringing together good authors, good books, and good publishers.
Stan writes the monthly Priorities colum for BreakPoint.org. He has appeared on National Public Radio's Tell Me More, WGN's Milt Rosenberg program, and many Christian shows, including The Eric Metaxas Show and Moody Radio's New Day Florida. A licensed minister and an inspirational speaker, he served as moderator for the Christian Book Expo panel discussion, Does the God of Christianity Exist, and What Difference Does It Make?
