Right now the "headline number" (ie 9.1%) is pretty much meanngless.
The current situation is such that the number will not move very far in either direction from 9% or so.
There are currently a huge number of discouraged workers,and a substantial number that are long term unemployed who when benefits run out, etc, just tend to disappear with respect to the statistics.
If the economy weakens, more and more workers drop out of the "official" workforce, and as "discouraged workers" don't count, so the "official rate" does not change much.
At the other end, if the economy were to get a real spurt of actual job growth, a lot of formerly discouraged workers would start looking again, so any change in the official unemployment rate wold be strongly masked by growth in the size of the workforce.
Either way, the 9.1% does not move very much either way.....
The "real" number we should be looking at it workforce participation, and the total number of jobs.
It is a good thing that Obama passed his $880 Billion stimulus package, or the US unemployment rate might have gone over 8% if he hadn't.
If we just cut the top tax rate to 35%, it'll surely spur job creation.
