corrente

Leigh Strope of AP writes on the Wecovery:

The nation's unemployment rate dropped to 5.7 percent in December to the lowest level in 14 months, but employers finished the year without many help wanted signs for the holidays, adding just 1,000 new jobs.


0.2 percentage point drop in the jobless rate occurred because fewer people were looking for work, the Labor Department said Friday. More than 300,000 people gave up their search for jobs and dropped out of the pool of available workers.

Amazing way we have of counting unemployment, isn't it? Imagine if we measured how good a party was this way: "Hey, my party's a success since people are leaving!" Sigh....

UPDATE: Via Atrios, an excellent post from MaxSpeak:

[In Novbember 2001] the Establishment Survey showed total employment of 130,900,000 (total non-farm, all employees). At the beginning of 2003, it was 130,356,000. Now here we are wrapping up 2003 – surrounded by Bushist triumphalism – it is 130,124,000. We have fewer jobs now than when the recession ended [in 2001].

Looks like 665,000 lucky duckies. Truly, Bush is a miserable failure on the jobs front. But you feel safer, right?