The 8.5% number is profoundly misleading because it is a distorted result of people simply giving up on ever finding a job again. Refusing to include people out of work so long they’ve given up ... hope ... is like changing from Farenheit to Celsius so you can tell people it’s not really so hot outside. Using (instead) 2008 labor force participation as the baseline (because it had remained nearly constant for many years) the current unemployment rate is just under 11%. And that’s without including people presently working under 15 hours who actually want full-time work and would take it if they could find it.

There were far more jobs lost in the 200-‘02 recession than in this one, but unemployment rates never went anywhere near as high as they are now because small and medium businesses continued to be started and expanded. Current unemployment problems are the direct result of an unwillingness of people to start or expand businesses, a phenomenon directly traceable to the most anti-entrepreneurial administration in American history.

Not mention, an Administration that has now pushed total government participation (Federal, State, Local) to something just under 50% of GNP.  Since Government produces nothing and does not create wealth, nearly half of our economy is dead weight.

I contend the meager growth we are seeing is a product of companies figuring out how to survive and grow a little DESPITE the deadweight of Government.  As long as Government sucks up half the economy of the country, we are doomed to experience sub-par results.

Time was when the media said there would have to be sustained production of at least 400,000 jobs per month to have any appreciable impact on unemployment.  So touting the present uptick is largely political packaging of a dismal situation.  The real problem is millions have dropped out of the labor force entirely, and if that were taken into account, the actual unemployment rate would be much, much higher.  The lowering of “unemployment” is just people falling off into the abyss of permanent joblessness, not any real increase in jobs.  For example, my cousin has been out of a job for two years now (he was a teller in a financial institution that went under).  He’s given up looking for work, lost his unemployment benefits, and he just lives with his Mom and they live off her government retiree’s pension.