10.2%

You're probably not going to hear this until sometime next week, what with a Muslim guy having shot up an army base shouting "Allahu ackbar" and all, but the jobless recovery is right on schedule. Your friendly reminder that despite all the hubbub about the stock market, Goldman-Sachs posting up $100 million if profits by the time I get to the next comma, various other businesses like Ford posting up profits, GDP growing, and the fact that a friend of yours found $5 bucks on the street last week (the 5th best economic news in the country), the economy is still pretty bad for the people that have to live in the economy. Ten point motherfucking two percent.

The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday in its monthly economic appraisal.
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“There’s no doubt that the slashing and burning of jobs has abated quite a lot,” said Allen L. Sinai, the founder of Decision Economics, a research firm. “The economy is recovering, but it is a very soft recovery.”

The biggest losses came in the construction, manufacturing and retailing sectors. Health care companies added 29,000 jobs to their payrolls, and the number of temporary workers increased by 34,000 — a significant gain that could indicate employers are beginning to expand their businesses again.

The Labor Department also revised September’s losses to 219,000 from 263,000.

Sadly those health care sector job numbers are temporary, as those 29,000 jobs were all lobbyists who were hired to try and kill health care. Yet despite the fact that there are some horrifying records being set (like most months in a row shedding jobs and the highest number and percent of unemployed people who have been out of work for 6 months) economists are optimistic. Why? Because they have jobs. But also because there are several positive indicators, like the pace of jobs losses slowing, manufacturing stabilizing, and President Obama getting the larger part of the wishbone in an after dinner tugging match with Canadian PM Steven Harper. We can only hope he uses that wish on the economy.

But economists are also concerned that this increase in the jobless numbers might depress the economic recovery as consumer spending will stay flat. I'm no economic theorist, but I'd be more worried about the economy not doing well enough to benefit people without jobs than people without jobs not doing enough to benefit the economy. And they say unemployment is still going to go up, hitting 10.5% next year. So....uh...ooh...ouch, well...how..'bout..them Yankees? Yes, concentrate on baseball, focus on an upcoming weekend of football. Don't mind me, I'll just be getting a prime ass spot in the breadlines while you do that.