If someone in "government" announced it, dig into the details

Hey, good news for once, sort of.  The US Department of Labor released numbers today indicating that for the 12 months ending September 30, 2010, the US economy had added 1,000,000 jobs!  Cue the confetti and streamers, and now for the balloon drop....

Then they revealed where most of those jobs were. You guessed it, mostly in retail, seasonal, part time, medical care workers.  Pretty much all of the low paying categories of work.  Which is great if you are looking for a job in retail, part time, or the medical profession.  Not so great for the rest of us.  Few if any jobs were created in higher paying professional, technical, and managerial ranks. 

This just proves one of my favorite pieces of advice - If someone in "government" announced it, dig into the details.  Odds are the person, agency or department making the announcement is attempting to put the very best "spin" on the story they can.  But the devil's in the details, so check 'em out.

Job seekers, we need to be sure we check it out and verify the facts before we get too excited about "positive" news like this.  Building your hopes up on shaky statistics and political announcements just sets you up for disappointment.  You get enough of that just from the nature of the job search, you don't need to compound it yourself.

Your best measure of whether the "economy" is improving probably will be

•  the number of job openings you encounter,
•  then number of interviews you get, and
• finally when you get that elusive job offer you are seeking. 

After all, it isn't the national economy you need to improve now-it's your personal economy.  Now that's when we will cue the the confetti and streamers, and the balloon drop!

Copyright 2010