On unemployment and statistics...

Whenever economy is bad enough, it becomes even more surreal to read reports and statistics on unemployment. Such is the time now, when after inheriting a massive surplus for government and eight years in office, George W Bush will oversee the economy on tail spin not once, but twice. Latest reports show that America has lost one million jobs since December. In other words, for the past nine months of this year, more than 110,000 people lost their jobs EVERY month. This is not to mention those who are under-worked (under-employment, they call it, for not having enough hours to do, but working nonetheless) which is now 11%.

Forget about the high gas price and increasing food price at the moment. Even with low prices, how do these people survive? Most of them are likely to be in low-paying jobs, living pay check to pay check. This is not to say there are no high rollers who lost their jobs too. But at least it's more likely the wealthier bunch has more buffer to weather this economic storm.

These statistics also ignore those who all but give up on looking for work. I know, because my husband is one of them, who gave up three years ago, and has focused on starting his own venture (that's another story on its own).

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Sometimes, economists are like wartime generals. They look at statistics in a clinical manner. Don't they have a name for it - "collateral damage" - in the military battlefield? Yes, it's "damage," no doubt about that. I guess their jobs dictate it that they have to look at these statistics in a detached manner. But that could never blunt the impact on those who were damaged along the side - by the economy or in the battle.

Given globalization, it's a painful redistribution of wealth, for the wealthy Western countries (in Europe and America) to adjust their regular standard of living that comes with higher cost of living, with those in the developing world who are all upwardly mobile (except those in Africa who fall so far behind that they are not likely to benefit from anything). Just in China alone have 1.2 billion people who are going to share the rising wages and living standard with the West.

That macro view does not really have anything wrong. It's bound to happen, with or without globalization. But globalization simply accelerates the pace. In the past, it used to happen after a few generations, measured in decades. We now witness this happening in every 5-year span. Just look at how much the table has turned between Hong Kong and China.