Wow. It looks like the big retailers are pulling out all stops to stop the Obama steamroller with captive audience meetings with their employees to engage in none-too-subtle office politicking (which JH has written about before).

I have been telling students in my employment law class for years that the reported unemployment rate that so many in this country depend upon is a farce and does not nearly capture the full number of the people without jobs or underemployed in the United States.

Daniel Gross of Slate does a nice job explaining this latest form of voodoo economics:

It’s hard to overstate the poor numbers coming out of Wall Street in recent months. But could it be that we’re overstating the gravity of the situation? As job losses have mounted and consumer confidence has plunged, policymakers, news organizations, econo-pundits, and even some of my Slate colleagues have noted that the unemployment rate, which rose to 6.1 percent in September, seems to be at a nonrecessionary, noncatastrophic, low level. The unemployment rate is still below where it was in 2003; and between September 1982 and May 1983, the last very deep recession, it topped 10 percent . . . .

But maybe the employment data are much worse than they seem.