Reply #18: way to change the subject

[rapturedbyrobots]

in other words:

you're deliberately missing the point. which is that improvement in a single index that stops counting people after 1 year of unemployment could indicate many things. The two most obvious are: 1) jobs really are being created and filled faster than they are being lost; 2) people are actually falling into the +1 year category of unemployment and no longer being counted.

without a robust dataset that includes other indices such as participation (the proportion of working age individuals that have a full-time job...arguably a better index to gauge the status of the workforce), this single data point is pretty useless. no hope or disappointment...just a number.

if you want to get all hopey and changey about such an obscure number, go ahead. but don't pretend people are crazy or bitter just for being smart enough to realize there are alternative hypotheses.