statistics

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34272807/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

updated 3 minutes ago

The Labor Department said the economy shed 11,000 jobs last month, the smallest monthly loss since December 2007. That's much better than the 130,000 losses Wall Street economists expected and an improvement from the 111,000 cuts in October.

The unemployment rate fell to 10 percent from 10.2 percent in October, a 26-year high. Economists had expected the rate to remain unchanged.

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If that figure for the number of jobs lost turns out to be accurate, and the trend continues, that's great.

However, this is a perfect example of the inaccuracy of the official "unemployment rate".
Since population is increasing, and I believe that is true for working age adults, for "actual" unemployment to decrease, there would have to be an increase in the number of jobs. Even with a static number of people of working age, any decrease in the number of jobs, no matter how small, would not result in a decrease of actual unemployment. Of course, we already know that counting the number of people who want jobs but have given up looking for the time being (eg., going back to college), and those who are employed part-time, but want full-time jobs, the unemployment rate is more than 17%. Note that if you worked 1 hour last month, you are counted as employed for that month.