Never give up!

Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
Let me channel Winston Churchill, a voice I often heard on the radio during and after WWII, "never give up!"

Today, a headline and subhead almost brought me to tears
U.S. unemployment rate drops to 8.6% in November

Employers add 120,000 jobs, but the jobless rate's drop is also due to a shrinking labor force: 315,000 people gave up looking for work.
315,000 thousand people in America in November alone are supposedly so discouraged at being unable to land a job [within the extended period for receiving unemployment compensation] that the government "people counters" consider them "quitters."

It's not true, of course. Hundreds of thousands of folks don't just quit looking each month, but the government geeks say, "Let's use some magic with statistics to make the situation look better than it is."

Don't let the government just arbitrarily say you've quit looking if you're unemployed and you either have run out of unemployment benefits or didn't qualify in the first place. Write or email your state and federal representatives and demand they force the "people counters" to stop skewing the statistics by wrongly classifying the unemployed as quitters.

Here's more from Winston you might gain strength from:
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

and
A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.
Winston Churchill

If you have been out of work for an extended period, it is normal to feel depressed and discouraged, but those are obstacles you can and must overcome. Don't be too proud or stubborn to seek help to get past the mental obstacles which may be holding you back. There are literally thousands of sources for checklists which, if you are honest in your self-assessment, can identify those obstacles and point you to low cost or free sources of help in overcoming those obstacles. I'm not touting myself as one of those sources, but they do exist and they are helping hundreds and thousands of folks every day.

Let me leave you with a last quote
If you're going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

 
T

True Position

I would support the release of two sets of numbers, but not removing the current set. (for a while at least) You cannot make useful comparisons of current situations to the past if you significantly change how you measure.

Eventually the new set of statistics will develop their own history.

Of course that creates an easy source of political attack advertising: advertise your candidate's numbers to adjusted unemployment, report your opponent's non-adjusted.
 
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