More Jobs=Higher Unemployment. Wait, what?

       You would think that because of the creation of new jobs there would be lower unemployment, but according to an article in The New York Times it’s the opposite. The reason for this is that people are only considered unemployed when they are actively looking for jobs. An increase in jobs means that there is more hope for people to find one and therefore more people are looking. I find this to be very interesting. Does this mean that if a place has a high unemployment rate it doesn’t necessarily mean there is a lack of jobs?

       The article also states that due to the increase in jobs that are available there is more “optimism in the economy.” It’s rather ironic that a rising level of unemployment isn’t negatively affecting the attitude of the citizens. I don’t understand why it is that people are only classified as unemployed when they are looking for jobs though. If a person is not contributing to society economically then they should be classified as unemployed, in my opinion. When I hear unemployed I think of someone who doesn’t have a job, including people that aren’t looking for one. 

       This makes me wonder who was the one that came up with this way of counting things. There has to be a reason for why this is the way things are. My theory is that maybe it had something to do with getting benefits from it, sort of how when they were writing the new constitution the delegates wanted to count the slaves as part of the population in order to get more representation in the government, but not when it came to being taxed. I’m probably way off, but that’s what I think.

       The article also mentions that in New Jersey last month there was a loss of jobs and yet the unemployment rate decreased. I really don’t understand that logic. Does that mean because there were less jobs available then less people were looking for a job and therefore weren’t considered unemployed? This really is a puzzling concept to me. I wonder if everything dealing with economics is this complicated. Maybe the reason this is all so difficult to understand is because there are so many variables when it comes to calculating data, especially with money and how it travels. If I knew what numbers were used to calculate certain things and why that is I’m sure this would all make more sense. 

This article, entitled New York City's Jobless Rate Increased to 8.6% in August Despite Hiring Gains, was written on September 19, 2013 by Patrick McGeehan and published in The New York Times