Rising Unemployment Concern 07.02.09

It’s hard not to be concerned with seeing the unemployment rate rise month after month.  Just today the numbers were released bringing the national percentage up to 9.5%, a 26 year high.  You hear all of these predictions like, “expecting to only see another 1 million jobs lost for the rest of the year” and you really can’t put any faith at all in the economists’ predictions.  They naturally change their predictions often, and when the single month of June alone was -467k, it’s hard to imagine only another 1 million jobs will be lost over the next 6 months.

Georgia is sitting at a 9.7% unemployment rate as of May 2009, and my county, Whitfield County, had a rate of 12.4% for May.  Not as bad as some of course, but that’s nothing at all to be happy or proud of.  My county’s major industry was carpet, so when the housing bubble popped, so did things here.  I won’t even bring up budget deficits.

Leave it to Google to come up with an attractive way to view and compare Labor Statistics down to even the county level of the states.  It’s worth checking out if you’re curious where your state or county stands.  Personally I never hear about unemployment rates down to the county level much, so that’s an easy way to compare it to the state and even nationally.

As far as job security for myself, I really don’t know.  I work at a local government place, and everyone is unsure at the moment of every one’s fate here.  I’m sure I’ll blog about it later on how things turn out.  In the meantime, I’ll continue to try my best to work out a Plan B, because with everything, you should always have a fall back plan.

When will things improve?  Who knows.  But honestly I don’t have much faith in our current elected officials after seeing all of this massive spending and next to no improvement.  Perhaps I’m just bitter about the Cap and Trade Bill passing the House last week, or the talk of breaking the campaign promise of not increasing taxes on the Middle Class.