When is a Bad Thing Really a Good Thing?
By Barbara Poole
When is what appears to be a bad number actually a good number? The April jobs figures came out this week, and employers added 290,000 jobs to the economy, indicating a long awaited turnaround to the jobs decline. At the same time, unemployment jumped to 9.9%, which on the surface seems bad. It’s actually good news, indicating that more workers are falling off the ranks of “underemployed”. meaning that they were not even counted as being out of work. These workers are streaming back into the employment market, and so the jobless number goes up at the same time. It really is a good thing. But, most economists believe that unemployment numbers will not secrease to the pre-crash averages of 5-6% until the middle of this decade.
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