Thursday the new unemployment number was announced - a drop from 8.3% to 8.2%. Unfortunately, that's not a sign of an economy going in the right direction since it only counts those still eligible for unemployment benefits and looking for work. The real number that should concern Americans is the 87,897,000 dropped from the unemployment numbers who are still unemployed but no longer counted. Roughly only 64% of the labor force is now counted in determining the unemployment number; so of course, as the labor force number goes down, so does unemployment numbers. But those without jobs, not producing, and those under employed (either by working less than the desired 40 hours per week or working in jobs far below their skill level)are also not counted as unemployed.