Making It Worse?

The big news of the day is that the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 8.1% in February. Obviously not a great help to the confidence of the economy itself, but I wonder how much bigger of a blow the ultra-specific information we can now get on layoffs strikes. Even if the unemployment rate was widely disseminated during past recessions, people didn't have the chance to read about all day on the Internet or watch talking heads rant about it all day on a 24-hour cable TV channel. Not to mention the impact the Internet has had in giving us details about layoffs in every niche, whether its Above the Law reporting about job cuts at law firms before they happen or someone on sportsjournalists.com starting a thread about the latest newspaper to trim its staff. These sorts of layoffs certainly happened during past economic downturns, but I have to imagine the fact people can actually read about them is only helping to make things worse.