Personal Dork Assistant

Funhouse Statistics

For amusement value, you can't beat the recent factoid that the number of unemployed college graduates has exceeded the number of unemployed high-school dropouts. Of course, that's mostly due to there being a lot more college graduates than high school dropouts. Nevertheless, the unemployment rates of the college grads has jumped by a more significant fraction than for the dropouts.

Meanwhile, Open Source Guy argues that he is saving jobs in Silicon Valley by outsourcing to India, since his company (selling software for "collaborative software development," nudge, nudge, wink, wink) might've folded without the cheap manpower.

At an engineering offsite in the Marin Headlands, soon after the announcement, a "V.C.-type" speaker came in to put the company's move into a larger economic context, developer Leonard Richardson, 24, remembers.

"He talked about how the agricultural economy had become the industrial economy, which in turn had become the knowledge economy. Someone asked him what comes next, after outsourcing takes its toll on the knowledge economy. He said that if anyone had any ideas he was interested in hearing them," says Richardson.

Kevin Maples, another programmer, dubbed this vague notion the "I don't know, you think of something" economy.

The rank-and-file don't seem convinced. Meanwhile, at least the job picture seems to be improving at home.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that for the week ending March 27, new jobless claims filings declined by a seasonally adjusted 3,000 to 342,000, the lowest level in two weeks.

Woo hoo, it's like, a new record, or something.