Wow! I Hate Being So Stupid! I Can’t Figure Out This Unemployment Rate Thing

December 4, 2009

Today the new unemployment figures came out and even though there was a job loss of 11,000 the unemployment rate dropped by two-tenths of a percentage point down to 10%. In previous reports it appeared to me that each time we lost around 500,000 jobs, the unemployment rate would go up about .1%. I just don’t get it.