Unemployment Up In The US

UPDATE: If unemployment was still calculated as it was before Reagan, it would work out to be more than 16% in the US as shown here.

As reported by the Huffingtonpost here, the unemployment rate in the US has risen to 7.4% as employers cut 524,000 jobs in December.

To put this in a little bit of historical context:
- 7.2% unemployment is the highest unemployment rate since 1993
- the average work week in the US has dropped to 33.3 hours, the lowest since 1964
- in job losses in 2008 totaled 2.6 million, the most since 1945

The concluding statement of the article is typical of the Huffingtonpost and most mainstream media but made me chuckle a little:

Even with a new government stimulus and the Federal Reserve's decision to ratchet down a key interest rate to an all-time low, the unemployment rate is expected to keep rising. Some economists think it could hit 9 or 10 percent at the end of this year.

The government's stimulus plan will only prevent the creation of new jobs as the government continues to take from the competent and give to the incompetent. The Fed's low interest rate will continue to debase the dollar, robbing individuals of their savings, ensuring that any wages earned under Obama's job creation plan won't have any purchasing power anyway.