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You're not gonna know unless you ask

Published: Jul 06, 2009

Perception is nine-tenths of the law, or something like that. And the ubiquitous reports on "consumer confidence" publicized by the media do only seem to intensify general trends -- if the results say that confidence has improved, people will feel better about the direction of the economy and about spending in general, and their feelings about the future will improve, boosting the following month's numbers (or, um, vice versa). But forget all those quasi-scientific reports -- we simply asked our readers what they thought about climbing unemployment. Wanna know what they said? Take a gander at the results of our current poll, which asks where the jobless rate will peak.

Almost 40% of you think it will hit 12% before too long, and another 33% of you predict a more modest additional uptick to 10%. Almost equal factions of our survey pool foresee doom and recovery. About 15% think we'll be faced with 15% (or higher) unemployment, possibly followed by fall of the American Empire. A smaller percentage (12%) think that at 9.5%, we're as high as we're gonna get. (Break out the noisemakers!).

Have you voted in this contest? Make your opinion known! (By the way, you can find such probing poll questions on most of the landing pages -- Companies, Industries, Professions, and Education. So speak out!)

--Posted by Todd Obolsky, Vault Staff Writer

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