Unemployment Rises to 8.2% in Massachusetts -- Not a Bakken Story

I'm in Boston, so I catch local news once in awhile.

This is the lead story on radio today: unemployment rises to 8.2 percent in Massachusetts.

For the last several months, the Boston Globe has run stories on how vibrant the Massachusetts employment picture is. I was always skeptical of those stories; there are a lot of green energy start-ups in the Boston area.

The reason I post this is because the local radios state that the unemployment rate of 8.2 percent is not all bad: "It's well below the national average." That's what they say.

Two comments:

1. It's pretty bad when folks can find a silver lining in unemployment numbers rising and now at 8.2 percent locally.
2. The national unemployment is back up to 9.6 percent. I don't know about you, but for me, there's not a huge difference between 8.2 percent and 9.6 percent.

And so it goes.