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That's why you probably didn't know that almost the entire American work force was laid off last month. At least that's what this Reuters headline claims (and it's repeated the same way in the story).

Lay-offs surge 85 pct in Aug vs July: survey

What really happened is that layoffs (at least as estimated by one private firm quoted in the story) went to 79,459 in August from 42,897 in July. Yes, the August number is 85% higher than the July number. But surely that's the most inflammatory possible way to spin the relationship between those two numbers (thank goodess the July figure was not zero -- the "surge" would infinite!). Reality (as opposed to Reuters): the difference in layoffs between the two months is about two one-hundtreths of one percent of the US workforce (according to estimates of workforce size from the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Thanks to Tom Demas for the link.

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