Stopping The Bleeding

The unemployment numbers for this month were unexpectedly VERY positive.

Waiting for the monthly job numbers to be released this morning, I saw the New York Times homepage run a headline that said the "economy shed 11,000 jobs in November." I assumed, in all sincerity, it was a typo.

After all, there were plenty of estimates on what to expect. The most optimistic number I saw was 130,000 job losses; the most pessimistic was 169,000 job losses. A total of 11,000 losses just didn't seem realistic.

And yet, that's what happened.

The United States economy shed a surprisingly few 11,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent in October, the Labor Department said Friday. [...]

The pace of job loss has been declining since a peak in January, and some economists say they expect a turning point to come in the late spring or summer, with employers finally adding workers as a recovery takes hold.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised estimates from September and October, and both were better than previously thought.

Now if I didn't know better I would suspect that this would be enough for the dumbass wingnuts in Congress and out to stop saying the stimulus was a failure. But unfortunately I DO know better and all this will do is add fuel to the fire for those morons in that they will say its "proof" that the free market works inspite of the stimulus bill.

If you are reading this and frowning in disbelief right now just wait a few days until it happens.