History teaches that the level of unemployment is not as important as whether the rate's going down.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It was gradually learned that acceptance of a somewhat higher inflation rate would not really bring somewhat higher employment.
The unemployment rate has effectively not gone down from where it was at the peak of the recession. The only reason it's gone technically from 10 percent to 8 percent is so many people are discouraged and have quit work.
The 1930s had been a time of tremendous economic distress. And the unemployment rate was enormously high by any historic standard.
Certainly, 9 percent unemployment and very slow growth is not a good situation.
There will not be an automatic increase in interest rate when unemployment hits 6.5%.
Unemployment is sky-rocketing; deflation is in our future for the first time since the Great Depression. I don't care whose fault it is, it's the truth.
What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high, people who have jobs see their incomes go up, businesses make big profits. But they're learned to do more with less, and so they don't hire.
In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages.
Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.
The unemployment rate is not real.