Not #50 Someday

Current favorite number? 13.6%. Not 0.136 because that would be a stupid favorite number, but 13.6% isn't stupid at all.

The reason it is my current favorite number - Michigan's new unemployment rate! I know that this number is still pretty terrible and tomorrow when all the state's rates are reported there will be some sort of line in the various articles like "Michigan again had the highest unemployment rate at 13.6%", but I see this as pretty good news. It's not too difficult to paint this bad number as somewhat good news. Michigan's unemployment rate peaked 14.5% in December (my current least favorite number. It's at least as bad as .145) and overall employment has increased every month for the past five months. At this rate, we'll have 100% employment in 15.111 months. Mark your calendars for September 20th, 2011 because everyone person you know will be working. Also using this extrapolation, we'll have 13.6% negative unemployment by January of 2013. What does this mean? People who don't even exist will be employed. That's how good things will be assuming that we stay on the current trend and that people who don't exist can hold jobs. I studied me some math during my learnin' years.

My dream is a little more simple than this - I hope that at some point in the not terribly distant future, I won't have to read the sentence "Michigan again had the highest unemployment rate..." The two reasons I could see this working out are we keep creating jobs, or we change our name to something else like Awesomevania. I vote for the first approach, but I also wouldn't mind having the name Awesomevania, so that could work too. Good luck with continued success at finding work people of Awesomevania. Hopefully our unemployment rate doesn't go down because you have to leave, thereby (quick vote: does therefore also work here? I originally had therefore but it seemed less fitting than thereby) reducing the denominator.