ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS - AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  There is contradictory economic news, but none of it is all that great.  The unemployment rate has dropped from 10.2% to 10%, as The New York Times reports:

The United States economy shed 11,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, down from 10.2 percent in October, the Labor Department said Friday.

The government also revised the October number to show that the economy lost 111,000 jobs instead on 190,000.Though pace of job loss has been declining since a peak in January, the November number was surprising. Economists have been expecting a turning point to come in the late spring or summer, with employers finally adding workers as a recovery takes hold. The last time the number was this good was December, 2007, when the economy added 120,000 jobs. “We’re moving toward stability in the labor market and the end of the tremendous firing that has plagued America,” said Allen L. Sinai, the founder of Decision Economics, a research firm.

But...

“But it’s going to be bleak for years. While it is going to be better than what we’ve seen, it’s still going to be terrible.”

And that's the point.  The administration will hail "improvement," but the real situation is awful:

The number of Americans facing long-term unemployment, which includes people who cannot find work for 27 weeks or more, has been at record highs in recent months, reaching 5.6 million in October. It was more than 5.9 million people in November, or 38.3 of percent of those unemployed. Once hiring resumes, those workers are likely to be among the last to land jobs.

And then there's this, from AP:

NEW YORK — A decline in sales at the nation's retailers in November after two consecutive months of gains is an ominous warning sign for the holiday shopping season and for an economy in the early stages of a fragile recovery.

Many merchants may be forced to discount more than they planned to get financially strapped holiday shoppers to buy after last weekend's respectable bargain buying surge didn't offset weak spending for the rest of the month.

The 0.3 percent decline, according to one measure, is especially worrisome because it comes on top of a freefall last November as spooked shoppers went into a defensive crouch after the financial meltdown. Analysts had expected a solid gain. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of all economic activity.

COMMENT:  We are far from out of the woods.  And with the Dems piling on more federal debt, we can face a double-dip recession without the economic means to recover fully.

December 4, 2009