Unemployment numbers December...Update

Update at the bottom


www.medfinity.com

Many, incuding myself were hoping for an improvement to the employment numbers...unfortunately bad news. The economy seems on life support.


Size of Labor force -661,000 vs -272,000 (revised down) last month.

No Longer in Labor Force +843,000 vs +326,000 (revised up) last month....this is really huge....
In the last 3 months 1.162 MILLION workers are gone...no longer counted.

U6 (those on UE long and short term plus those with part time jobs that want full time) is now 17.3% +0.1%

Over 1.1 million people are no longer counted in the BLS stat in the last 3 months alone because they have given up looking...thus they are no longer in the stats.

Dec 2008:
6.6 million people were unemployed 14 weeks or less(but still on benefits)
4.3 million people were unemployed 15 weeks or more (but still on benefits)
Total: 10.9 Million

Dec 2009:
6.2 million people were unemployed 14 weeks or less (but still on benefits)
8.5 million people were unemployed 15 weeks or more (but still on benefits)
Total: 14.7 Million (or a 74% increase over Dec 2008)
(from BLS Table A-9)

Actual unemployment is probably ~13% for the U-3 numbers and ~20.5% for the U-6 numbers....we are reaching depression era numbers.

This all suggests to me things are not only worse but will continue to stay bad. Not to be a doom and gloomer, but eventually something has to give. Either the government will have to print even more money (which causes inflation) or states will begin to default.

I worry to prevent default, many will begin to cut some crucial services such as fire and police. This leads one to reassess security and fire prevention protocol/plans. If ifr services are cut back do you need more fire extinguishers? A larger first aid kit? Should a AED be a part of your kit if you have someone in your house that could be a candidate for heart attack?

All things that should be considered.

Update
In my mentioning of defaults by states....a new article came out today about California and it may not pay some bills that come due in March. This is called a default in the real world, much like what happened in Dubai when they said they wanted to delay payments on bills.