[btilly]

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.

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 http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-financial-crisis-rea... for a list of some of them. And continued jobless numbers are not about to help.

[vire]

Great link. Thanks. Funny thing is, when just about everyone I knew was "getting their war on" and "getting their granite countertops on", it all felt ominous to me. I'm afraid that the U.S. is in for a very humbling penance.