Unemployment rate 10.2%

No one get upset over the problematic math behind the unemployment rate.<p>Even when I took economics in university and we got on this topic, our professor said that it is a very flawed number for such a numerous amount of reasons, but until the government adopts a better way of substantiating, view it as nothing more than a number that may or may not help you gauge the economic climate.<p>In other words, there is some benefit in understanding our situation with this surveyed number, but you should always question it and the media and government will use it how they please for their own agendas.<p>The debate on the unemployment rate is very interesting; Google it if you have time and read up.

It is important to note that unemployment is a lagging indicator; we may be in recovery while unemployment worsens for some time.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagging_indicator" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagging_indicator</a>

Two things about these figures. The first is that you shouldn't believe any historical comparisons. Over the years the US definition of unemployment was revised multiple times, and each time it was revised it was to a methodology that gave lower numbers. Therefore you aren't comparing apples to apples when you compare current figures with, say, the recession in the early 80s.<p>The other thing to consider is that we aren't out of the woods yet economically. There are still a lot of credit issues out there. You can see <a href="http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-financial-crisis-really-over.html" rel="nofollow">http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-financial-crisis-rea...</a> for a list of some of them. And continued jobless numbers are not about to help.