Happy days are here again

The "no really, this is good news" kind of news continued today as the government announced the official stats for unemployment. The news: nearly 350,000 people lost their jobs and the unemployment rate climbed to 9.4%. And it's fucking awesome.

Some 345,000 jobs were lost last month, a stark figure, but one that represented the smallest number of monthly job losses since last September, the Labor Department reported. Economists said the figures showed the government’s efforts to prop up the economy were beginning to have an effect.

But in a sign of the recession’s worsening toll, the unemployment rate climbed to 9.4 percent, its highest point in 26 years. The rate — a measure of jobless people looking for work — rose more than expected, partly because more people were resuming the hunt for a job.

Economists were encouraged that businesses were cutting fewer jobs, but six million jobs have now disappeared since the recession began in December 2007, and 14.5 million people are now unemployed. They warned that job losses were likely to pile up through the rest of the year as the country’s labor market bottomed out.

“These are still terrible numbers,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics. “We’re a million miles away from a recovery.”

Whoa whoa, whoa Mr. Chief Economist in Charge of Parade Raining and Punchbowl Turdification, you take that negative attitude and cram it where the sun don't shine. I'm not expecting you to get overly excited or throw a parade, but let's get real here: we have seemingly avoided total ruin, will not have to choose which one of our loved ones to eat and which one to burn for warmth, and we will not have to do battle in Thunderdome or any dome of any kind. How about a little recognition. Geez, who knew that economists weren't the life of a party?

Soon we might even hot the heady days of the Bush Administration: where we barely kept pace with the amount of jobs we needed to create in order to account for population growth. If that happens we should disband and just all go off and form new countries, because after taking into account the last eight years, being able to do that would just about qualify as the greatest achievement in American history. Who thought we would be two or three President's down the line before the Bush kneecapping was undone? Now one President might get it done in 1 or 2 terms AND we haven't been reduced to cannibalism/the dark ages. Scoff about that Mr. Smarty Pants Economic Guy. It's time to revel our diminished expectations, not get normal expectations.