Unemployment above 21% nationwide

Jobless Recovery is a misnomer. Its more like a recoveryless economic decline. Official numbers or not, the economy I see feels much more like 20% unemployed than the so called 10% U3 number. There are plenty of economists and analysts who take issue with the “official” number. John Williams, who runs a Web site called Shadow Government Statistics, does his own calculations each month that adjusts U-6 to include an estimate of the number of “long-term” discouraged workers - those who have been in that category for more than a year - and fall off the BLS radar. By his count, the unemployment rate hit 21.4 percent last month. (September) Whats also true is that these are people not buying homes, furniture, cars, anything else beyond just the basics. The average work week has sunk to a new post WW low of 33 hours. So the people working, have on average 20% less work. There's our 4 day work week we've all been dreaming of for years. So that amounts to something around 35% less worker productivity hours, than we'd have at 5% unemployment. And thats consistent with cap utilization rates in the 66% range. Labor utilization ranges in services too are in that range if you are counting. So imagine how the states and local governments are likely seeing 30% less tax revenue, and you start to paint a picture that is continuing to uglier by the day, and week. Cities like Chicago are just having people work 24 days less next year, unpaid, and probably will make even more cuts. Managers are working 4 day weeks. Services at all levels are being cut way back, which means a further erosion in business that is contracted out to private firms typically (maintenance, cleaning, just to name a couple.) All told when you see this massive of a level in cuts, in everything, where we had an economy built to service and sustain 300 million or more people, you aren't simply talking about a slowdown or temporary recession, but a more significant downshift to a drastically lowered level of living for the majority of people. You are talking about businesses being wiped off the face of the map that will no longer exist, or ever come back. Likely entire industries in many cases. New businesses may come, but they sure as heck aint getting started when banks aren't lending. So with this, employers, are still cutting back, and while having decent profits, its at the expense of far fewer workers. Levels of business that may not return soon, or ever. This is a difficult concept for many to grasp, and it literally has to play out over 4 or 5 years before people will truly recognize, things are really no longer the same in so many areas of life, and living. This is a massive upheaval taking place, and all the while people are simply watching the ever deceptive Dow or SNP 500 and their own portfolios as signs of things coming back. They aint. Its that simple. This is so profoundly beyond our governments capacity to deal with it, and so what we will likely get is fits and false starts of new programs and new fangled ideas where signs of desperation begin to finnally creep in, and people start no longer wishing and hoping, but finally begin to act. Wholesale changes will occur in our government that even Obama never dreamed of or envisioned. He's a very very small pawn in all of this so he can hardly be blamed. and neither can congress. they wont be able to get out of the way either. People really need to start ignoring the indexes, and we'd all be far better off if there was no CNBC. Where they go will be baffling so many people, and misleading them. If you want to really learn about the economy take a look at all the companies that have been delisted from exchanges or on pink sheets.

I had more job interviews and calls from employers in the past two weeks than I have had in the past year and half... The financial sector is starting to hire...