Job losses graph - interesting

Over the past two years we've been in a recession - anyone notice that? I found this graph published by Money at CNN today, interesting. It shows that we are at the point of starting to grow the job market again. Of course, what it doesn't say is how that market has changed - for example, more women are getting jobs than men (because amongst other factors, employers can get away with paying them less for the same job) and there are more people in part-time work, having lost full time jobs. There's also the seasonal variations, where at the holiday season, stores typically add more temporary jobs. And then there's the people who fall off the jobless reporting even though they are still jobless, which impacts the total jobless (as opposed to jobs lost per month). Even so, this graph, which only details the job losses or gains per month as reported to the Labor Department, tells an interesting story.

So what happened in January to change things? Why Obama took office! LOL. No, not really. Presidents don't have any real magic to change things; a part of this picture is down to his administration, but the economy is it's own animal; many other factors, some controllable, some not, have made for this pattern. I just hope the trend continues; because if it doesn't, so many Democrats will lose seats next November that what little 'change' Obama has been able to achieve up till then will be stopped dead in its tracks.

Goodbye Richard Todd - thanks for the memories!

Richard Todd, real life hero from WWII, and star of the Dam Busters movie, died today. I remember as a child watching that movie several times with my father. One of the great stories of technological innovation (the bouncing bomb) and heroic effort in the war. He was 90.

Done!

The Holiday Letter has been written, the labels printed, the envelopes stuffed and stamped - and they are in the mail! Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, USA - all. The list has grown shorter again this year. It's interesting that my UK list remains long and strong... hardier people you know!

One major frustration was that I simply couldn't get Word 2007 to merge my Outlook contacts properly. Frustrating to the nth degree. I finally went back to another machine with Word 2003 on it - a piece of cake to do the mail merge using the carefully thought out wizard. Why on earth did Microsoft drop that in 2007? Ah well, it's the holiday season and I don't want to sound like a grinch!

Happy Holidays!