Numbers
On January 14, 2000 the Dow-Jones Industrial Average closed the day at 11,722.98. That meant it would cost you $11,722.98 to buy the stocks listed in the DJIA group. Recently the DJIA has surpassed 12,000, but that’s 12,000 year-2006-dollars. To have the same value as the 11,722.98 year-2000-dollars, the DJIA would have to be at 13,715.89.
The stock market is still running behind inflation.
Fun unemployment fact: if you add new jobs, but the unemployment rate stays the same, there are more unemployed people.
Consider: if you have 100,000,000 people in the work force with a 5% unemployment rate, you have 5,000,000 unemployed people.
If you add 95,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate stays at 5%, there are 5,000 more people on the unemployment rolls, because there must have been an additional 100,000 people looking for work in the period. If the “new” jobs aren’t decreasing the unemployment rate, the actual number of unemployed people has to be increasing.
