Week7 Reading Journal - 2

The U.S. unemployment rate drops from 9 percent to 8.6 percent in November. The President said 140,000 people were hired in the private sector last month. The reason of the dramatic drop can be found in that 315,000 people stopped looking for a job, not that new jobs were created, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial at Chicago. Statistics is a funny thing. As shown in the unemployment rate, numbers can be easily manipulated. Even though the number says the rate went down, the reason might not be because more jobs were created. The unemployment rate in South Korea is about 4 percent last quarter, which indicates near full employment. Despite the number, many young people have difficulties finding a job. They argue that the number they feel is more than 20 percent. Like the U.S., many people give up looking for a job and the government and the ruling party take advantage of the statistics to promote their propaganda.

Source : http://www.npr.org/2011/12/03/143081606/behind-unemployment-figure-a-nuanced-outlook