Pay No Attention to Those Jobs Numbers

On the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its new unemployment numbers, and media outlets grab those numbers and broadcast them immediately (I’ve been guilty of this). Pay no attention to the jobs numbers that are released — those are revised multiple times later in the year, and often improve a little.

But the unemployment numbers — the number of people who are unemployed or underemployed or who want work but have given up looking for jobs because they’ve become discouraged — do not change. That number is 14.8 percent, an increase from 14.5 percent last month. Who’s looking for a job this summer?

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