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October 25, 2010

The Truth About Unemployment

According to government statistics and recent polling, the U.S. unemployment rate currently hovers at around 10%.

But economist John Williams includes both the short-term and long-term discouraged workers in his statistics, and estimates the current unemployment rate to be over 20%. Who's right? It doesn't matter; 20%+ is awful, but 10% is nothing to brag about.

Many pundits tell us this is "the new normal." If they're right, we'd better get started teaching our kids how to stretch a buck so that they can get through bouts of unemployment without going hungry.

2 comments:

Arlee Bird said...

Also we need to teach our kids to be proficiently bilingual so they can compete in the job market. I'm on my second year of unemployment and I am finding a great many jobs in my market now require applicants to be bilingual, usually in Spanish or Chinese. I really kind of hate it, but I guess that's the reality of today's world.

Lee
Tossing It Out

Barbara Frank said...

We've seen that, too. One of our kids was told by the local police that knowing Spanish puts you at the top of the hiring list.

Learning a foreign language is one of the Seven Strengths listed in my upcoming book.

Stay tuned, and thanks for weighing in!