From the Labor Department last week came the sobering report that for the eleventh straight month the U.S. unemployment rate stood near 6.8%. Superficially, the statistics had an encouraging side: the actual number of unemployed fell to 3,934,000 last month—the first time since October a year ago that the figure has dropped below 4,000,000. But a drop of this size is the normal seasonal pattern in October. Since unemployment is usually at its lowest in October, it promised to be a cold winter for a large part of the U.S. labor force.
Faced with this glum news, Labor Department spokesmen abandoned...
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