July job numbers are in*. Are you ready for them? Are you sure? You better think about it for a sec. OK. You asked for it:

Nonfarm payrolls dropped 216,000. (Booooo!) That's not too bad considering the 276,000 last month (meh...) and the 700,000 earlier this year (hooray?). We've lost 7.4 million jobs since the beginning of the recession in December (Super Boooo!) ... and we now have the highest unemployment rate since June of '83 (...).

Nobody seems to think this is very good news. In August analysts seemed to be pretty happy with the job loss rate, but the massive unemployment figure (9.7%) and the drop in the stock market the past few days is worrying some people.

Coupled with the massive surge in stock market profit-taking income among the wealthy over the last eight months, this country is being more, not less, divided into rich and poor during this "oh it's almost over yeah right" bullshit recession. I hate to get all Worker's Weekly on you, but this is disastrous, and I am not sure we will ever recover without, you know, pitchforks and torches and the seizing of the property of the entrenched inbred rich.

Workers of the world ... incite? Sorry. Puns are a bad habit.

Anyway, usually I try to say be alright and have a positive attitude and go to law school to ride it out, but ... oh. my. gawd.

In a memo to incoming students, Patricia D. White, the dean of University of Miami School of Law, surmised: “Perhaps many of you are looking to law school as a safe harbor in which you can wait out the current economic storm.” She then urged them to “think hard” about their plans and offered incentives for those willing to defer for one year.

[...]

As firms begin an industrywide overhaul, which has entailed slashing jobs and reconsidering hidebound inefficiencies like the lockstep salary, students will compete for half as many $160,000-a-year jobs this year as they did last. According to the National Association for Legal Career Professionals, the 2008 recruiting season marked “what is likely to be the beginning of a weaker legal employment market that may last for a number of years.”

So Law school is out. Which is OK, I guess. I mean, the world really doesn't need anymore lawyers, does it? So what to do? Right now I don't have any answers. But, let's make a deal. You go home, enjoy your three day weekend and come back here on Monday and we'll try to figure it out. Happy Laborless Day!

Side Note: I guess this is starting to become a monthly feature. I had no idea, until starting this blog, that each months job figures meant so much. I guess normally that isn't the case, but with a recession and all, well ...

"Unemployed" courtesy of erix! via Flickr Creative Commons

This may or may not help our readers out ... as our readers tend to be current students and recent grads. But, for those thinking of attending law school or grad school - or perhaps transferring - it's worth mentioning that the Washington Monthly has entered the College Ranking Game. I've always been a bit wary of this for-pay system, largely dominated by US News and WOlrd Reports vaunted rankings. The Atlantic's James Fallows explains why:

As a one-time editor of  US News & World Report, I am all too aware of the fatuousness imperfections of its college-ranking system. Being a pioneer in ranking has been the economic salvation of US News.But the premise that vastly different institutions can be preciselyranked on overall quality has its obvious limits. What are the "best" ten lines of work, ranked one through ten, for your child to aspire to? What are the "best" twenty-five cities to live in -- or pieces of music to listen to, or food to eat? Or people to marry? The only sane answer is, "it depends," which is the answer when it comes to colleges and universities too.

I concur. Not only are the rankings subjective, but they can be damaging to students and parents who make decisions based on one dominant list. Furthermore, they are damaging to employers who make hiring decisions based on those lists; not taking into account the intangibles of a possibly superior potential employee who couldn't even land an interview due to attending a "less regarded" educational institution. So if these lists are bogus, is there any reason to pay attention to Washington Monthly's?

The practical solution to ranking mania is not to try to eliminate them -- it's too late -- but instead to crowd the field so that no one "Best Colleges" list has disproportionate influence. Toward that end, the Washington Monthly's latest iteration of its college rankings is valuable simply for existing and adding diversity to the ranking field. It's more valuable than that, because of the way it carries through its analysis about the traits we really should value in universities, plus letting people tailor their own rankings based on the qualities that matter most to them.

That sounds fairly reasonable to me. The old compare and contrast ... what's important to you and how the rankings change to reflect what matters.

So, when picking a Grad School, Law School or any school, it may be best policy to use a number of different resources. What do different rankings say. What do friends, relatives or other connections say? What are your impressions upon visitation. These are all important qualities when choosing the next step in your education.

Let's hit the Links ...

Chief Happiness Officer Has Advice For Staying Motivated: From author Daniel Pink's TED talk. Dan discusses the use of performance rewards, and suggests that they may not be as beneficial as one would immediately think ... offering that the larger the reward, the worse the performance.

INside Higher Ed Reports that 55% of Campuses Report H1N1 Cases: Not career related, but if you are still in school it may help to know what the situation with H1N1 is. Check with your health center and look into the possibility of flu shots and other precautions to prevent contracting the virus.

The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Checks Out Free College Cell Phones From Google: "Google has donated cellphones to 11 colleges and universities for use in introductory computer-science courses this fall, hoping that students will build some interesting applications for the company's cellphone software." What kind of App would you build?

Welcome to the Daily Roundup. Each day at the ThinkTalk Blog we will post some links that we find informative, interesting, or just plain funny. The goal is to let you know what else is going on out there, and ultimately help you with the development of your career.