Well, we beat the forecast for October: we were only supposed to lose 175,000 jobs last month, and we did 190,000! Which really isn't very much. 190,000 people is the entire population of Little Rock, Arkansas (which is the 118th largest city in the United States!), or Mobile, Alabama. 190,000 is just slightly more than the entire population of Salt Lake City. Hmm. If every person that was laid off in October were a penny, it would be a stack of pennies almost a thousand feet high-as high as the tallest building in California, the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles. If everyone laid off in October were a page in the King James Bible, that'd be a stack of 624 Bibles, a stack standing 90 feet high. If they were all following you on Twitter, you'd be the 382nd most popular person, right between Richard Branson and John Hodgman. If they-well, you get the point.
Friday, November 6, 2009
7
Yeah--we need to hire people to stack Bibles.
cheer up. there's this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdW1CjbCNxw
How does one calculate the height of a theoretical stack of Bibles?
But regardless, this makes me feel less guilty about my continued unemployment in that month!
Measure the height of a single bible, multiply by the number of bibles in the theoretical stack. Although I don't know how they keep it from theoretically falling over. They need some kind of theoretical support system, and probably a lot of theoretical superglue.
You know this will just lead to theoretical unions and rampant theoretical corruption.
Such a negative spin. This affords more Americans the opportunity for independent time. Perhaps these 190,000 can catch up on all those Good Housekeeping and Fish & Stream magazines that have been piling up.
It's more leisure time!
(So 10.2% unemployment, plus approx 7.3% who have simply stopped looking for jobs? Nearly 1 in 5 Americans are without a job. Bill Clintonâ€"â€"with his dildo cigar and cum-stained dressâ€"â€"sounds pretty good right now, doesn't he?)
I wonder how high the pink slips are, stacked up.