By Susan Bruce

The recession continues. We hear peppy commentary from economists about how things are turning around, but what they really mean is that things are getting better on Wall Street. The mainstream media sanitizes the news for our protection, which led to a rather incredible recent story in the New York Times, telling us that a “strong” 290,000 jobs were added to the economy, even though the unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent. In this story, an economist stated that this is a sign that momentum is up. Momentum and the unemployment rate, apparently, are up. The way we count the numbers of unemployed is fatally flawed, since we only count people who are eligible for unemployment benefits. Those who were never eligible, or whose benefits have run out are not counted. We don’t hear much about the fate of the long-term unemployed, and with good reason. The news for them is terrible, especially for folks over 50. These folks have a better chance of getting hit by lightening than finding work.

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