Jobless Rate Falls to 6.2%, but Payrolls Slump. The unemployment rate in July dipped from 6.4 percent in June, but businesses unexpectedly cut 44,000 jobs. By Kenneth N. Gilpin. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
I often find economic news odd and difficult to comprehend. The jobless rate falls, to some degree due to the over 470,000 people that the Labor Department estimates have given up on finding work. To some degree? What degree? Why doesn't the AP article (assuming this bit wasn't edited out) try to make clear what is otherwise muddy? What does an unemployment rate mean when it doesn't count on people who have come to the conclusion that they cannot find employment? It seems that in virtually every sector of the economy, corporations are, on the whole, eliminating positions. And, remembering my own experiences from a number of years ago, how many people who lost a job decided to start a small business? It's a confusing mishmash of decimal pointed percentages that add up to zero.
Fed chairman Alan Greenspan sees hope, expecting a rebound starting in the second half of this year which starts, oh, about a month ago. Tax cuts and low interest rates are supposed to fuel consumers and businesses to spend and invest more. But why doesn't someone mention that companies have spend the last 15 years trying to spend only when they really needed to, and not to build excess capacity and inventory, which are bad for business? It might be honest and right for those in charge to admit, finally, that they don't know what really makes the economy go. If they did, it likely would.
7:12:35 PM 
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