When Good News is really Not Good

When Good News is really Not Good

I was reading the headlines, some business articles and just had to shake my head. Since when is Bad News good? The news on the economy sounds like the Doctor that tells you how lucky you are that you only broke 4 bones, not the 8 or 10 bones they normally see in that kind of a crash.

This is the Headline U.S. layoffs fall in February
This is what it says in the body of the article.

A widely watched measure of U.S. employment came up positive Wednesday.

Outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced that planned layoffs for private businesses in the U.S. fell 41 per cent in February compared with the month before to 42,090, their lowest level since July 2006.

In another employment report, ADP, a major payroll processing company, said that the U.S. private sector shed 20,000 positions during February, which was in line with expectations. It was a drop from 60,000 in January.

Last month, the Labour Department reported that the January unemployment rate in the U.S. was 9.7 per cent.

Now call me funny but planned layoffs of 42,090 people doesn't sound all that positive to me, and that is the lowest monthly layoff number since July 2006, lets see 5 months in 2006 and 12 months in 2007, 2008, 2009, and Jan of 2010, so all together that is 42 months all being higher layoffs then the 42,000 in Feb of this year. Even just using the 42K number that works out to be 1,764,000 people have been laid-off since July 2006 and that is on the way low side.

So where is the good news in that? Oh yes. that is right it could have been worse.

Now good news would have had a headline like “Jobless rate drops to 5% and private business adds 40000 new jobs in Feb.” Now to me that would be good news.

So the plan should be to pay off all your debts, stay out of debt, plan for the day that you are one of the lucky FEW that lose your job, be very careful about spending on anything that isn't necessary, and stock up the pantry. (P.S. - a new larger plasma HDTV is not a nessesity!)

We may be slowing down on how fast we fall off the edge of the economic cliff, but we are still falling, and it is going to be a long, long climb to get even part way back.

Don't just read the headlines, read the article. Don't just read the article, examine it. Don't just examine it, understand what it is talking about and do you own math and then read other articles.

Cheap-o Economics