There’s a graph from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi making the rounds. It compares job losses from the current recession to the two previous ones, and it looks pretty alarming.

However, I find the chart a little misleading for a couple of reasons. (I’m not saying we’re not having economic problems, I’m just saying this chart may be exaggerating the contrast between the current problems and previous ones.)

There are two issues with the chart. First, the scale is in absolute numbers of jobs, rather than a percentage change. Since the total number of jobs at the peak was different in the different recessions, rather than saying “We lost 2.5 million jobs in 2001 and we’ve lost 3.5 million so far”, we need to express that as a percentage of the total jobs there were to start with. A blogger at time.com did a better job, with % changes and more historical data.

The second issue is a bit more subtle, however. The data are expressed as the “job losses relative to the peak month”. OK. But aren’t the peaks just as anomalous as the valleys, in some sense? If we had really high employment during a good period, that’s great. But I’d really rather compare the % losses to the annual average of the previous 12 months, or something to that effect, rather than simply to the peak month, which may have seasonal effects and other factors at work. (I do confess that I don’t know a lot about the underlying data for these charts and how it’s collected, which may have a large influence on whether we really care or trust a number like that, however.)

She began to wish she’d never lost that shoe.

Oh sure, it was a fairy tale at first, but after the first few months of endless dancing, mindless nattering with the ladies of the court, and fingers sore from embroidery, Cinderella was thinking scrubbing floors for the cruel stepmother wasn’t so bad after all. She’d had time to herself then. Thoughts of her work didn’t follow her back to her straw pallet in the cellar at night. She’d had her friends the mice and birds.

Now people watched her every move from the moment she got out of her fluffy feather bed in the morning. The last mouse she’d seen had sent her maids to shrieking and been squashed by an overzealous page. Prince Charming was an utter bore, a trait tempered only by his continual absence.

She sighed and gazed out the high window of her bedchamber across the hills and valleys over which Prince Charming would someday rule. “Oh, Fairy Godmother, if only you could help me now,” she said.

<br/> “Come sit with me on the bed, Fairy Godmother. No, a little closer to the bedpost. What’s that? Oh no, the ladies of the court aren’t really all that bad, I suppose. Yes, yes, you’re very right. No… Oh, nothing, no worries. There, all done.” She looked up at Fairy Godmother, who wore a puzzled look on her face.

“What’s all this about, dear?”

Cinderella had tied Fairy Godmother’s feet to the bedpost with a silk scarf. “If Prince Charming is so wonderful, you live with him,” she said firmly. She gave Fairy Godmother a shove back onto the rumpled bedclothes and wrestled her wand out of her hand.

“But… Dear, I… that is…” Fairy Godmother sputtered.

“Bibbity Bobbity Boo,” said Cinderella.

And she lived happily ever after.