I Am Annoyed at the Dept of Labor and Media

Excuse me. The US lost "only" 11,000 jobs in November, according to the NY Times headline. I'm so tired of hearing these crap statistics out of the US Dept of Labor. We all know the real story behind what they call a 10% unemployment rate. It's so misleading. Do you really think only one of out ten people are hurting from the recession? How about:

• People who are employed but were forced to take paycuts
• People who can't get a job in their chosen field
• People who can't even get a survival job
• People whose unemployment money has run out
• People who are going back to school because the job market sucks
• People who got severance so they maybe aren't claiming yet
• People who kept their jobs but now have to do two more people's jobs on top of theirs because the rest of their department was laid off
• People who don't get their raise this year
• People who won't get their bonus this year
• People who can only get part-time work
• Families whose overall income has gone down
• People whose benefits were cut in lieu of a layoff
• People who can't afford COBRA
• Service people who don't get tipped appropriately because people are cutting the wrong corners
• Businesses making less money
• Businesses closing altogether
• Less taxes the government is collecting because we aren't making any money to tax
• Retirement funds no longer getting contributions, making these problems reach on for decades
• And there goes your inheritance too
  
• Girls who no longer get bought drinks because guys aren't making money anymore or are too scared to spend it
  

And in the other category:

• People who work at Goldman Sachs

My first guess is that in my own circle, at least half of us have been screwed by the financial mess. And my demographic is the young, upwardly mobile, college educated, mostly white set. Not representative of our nation as a whole.

So, the media: stop repeating these hollow numbers without telling the rest of the story.