‘Real’ Unemployment Figure Nearly 10 Percent

Monday, Feb. 4, 2008 11:00 a.m. EST

Headlines trumpet what seems like good news: Unemployment rate dropped to 4.9 percent and the slowing U.S. economy shed only 17,000 jobs in December.
Ethan Harris, chief economist at Lehman Brothers, told the New York Times that a 17,000 job loss was "an incredibly tiny numberâ€