When asked recently why I hadn’t written a blog in a few weeks I responded that the economic news has been so bad lately that I had nothing good to say. It’s been just over a month and it’s time to write again. I won’t focus on the $3 trillion lost in the recent market correction or the $1 trillion lost because of the S&P downgrade of U.S. bonds. Let’s talk about those people who profited due to the sharp increase in gold or that corporate profits are way up due to productivity gains made during the last couple of years. Let’s keep one eye closed and one eye focused on the good news.
I’ll avoid talking about the 28 states that saw jobless rates climb and I’ll only mention the 9 states where they fell. I’m beginning to feel better especially when considering that the employed youth between ages 16 and 24 increased by 1.7 million people. Let’s avoid talking about the percent of unemployed youth, which equals 49% of that age bracket. I could mention that the number of mass layoffs stabilized in July to equal that of June. That’s good news, isn’t it? Let’s not mention that there were 1,579 mass layoffs involving 145,000 workers in July. No peaking!
And as I continue to look at the glass as half-full I am reminded that overall unemployment remained at 9.1% and didn’t increase—another good sign? This means that 153.2 million Americans received a paycheck. Don’t think about the 13.9 million who didn’t—this is an awesome way to view statistics. Now that I’m on a roll, let’s keep it going. Let’s focus on the number of unemployed for less than five weeks--that statistic declined in July. Don’t think about the 387,000 people in this category. And lastly, just knowing that those considered long-term unemployed (greater than 27 weeks) didn’t increase is a lot easier to talk about than thinking that they accounted for 44.4% of the total unemployed and equaled more than 6 million Americans.
Now I know how politicians do it. They just close one eye…a lot. We might call it a wink, but it does partially blind a person from the bad news. I’m feeling a lot better about the economy and I’m ready to vote.
