Friday, February 5, the national statistics for unemployment were released. The previous day, it was announced that nearly a million more jobs were destroyed in the first quarter of 2009 than what was stated by the Government. This of course is the same Government that said we weren't in recession for about eight months before finally admitting the recession had started....eight months previous. This employment news trashed the stock market with the biggest single day losses in over nine months.

Here is the confusing information we must sort through.

• U3 unemployment (the figure most quoted in the news) dropped .3%. U3 does not included long term unemployed people who have given up.
• U6 unemployment which includes those who have given up and those that are underemployed (taking a part-time job) dropped from over 17% to just over 16%.

The figures above are "seasonally adjusted" based on past seasonal trends. Some think this is a fair way of looking at employment due to seasonality differences. Others see it as manipulation.

• Non-seasonally adjusted U6 employment rose to over 18%.
• the Government (misreported past job losses and seems to always revise the figures later...upward.....worse than reported.

There are somethings going on. These confusing numbers, as misreported as they may be....signal that things might be turning around. If it is a signal, that signal is very weak at best.

What we do know is that we are about to undergo a worsening of foreclosures for homes and businesses, as well as many states are having budget problems on a huge scale. During a normal recession, state revenues don't rebound for a year or two after the deepest point of a recession.

We seem to be on a teeter totter and not sure which way the economy will fall.