Well, my personal economy is still sucky. The news reports an improved movement in the unemployment rate so I thought I'd check to see if I'm still alive. You see it's been 1 yr and 5 months since the layoff.

Good news! According to the govt, I'm not unemployed!! ??? I'm just "marginally attached".

From: http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm"...Persons Not in the Labor Force

(Household Survey Data)

The number of persons who were marginally attached to the labor force was
1.6 million in August, about the same as a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals wanted and were available to work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted
as unemployed, however, because they did not actively search for work in the
4 weeks preceding the survey. There were 534,000 discouraged workers in
August, also about the same as a year earlier. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, were not currently looking for work specifically
because they believed no jobs were available for them. The other 1.1 million
marginally attached had not searched for work for reasons such as school or
family responsibilities. (See table A-13.)....."