Orley Ashenfelter is a professor at Princeton University and the author of the Big Mac Index, a measurement of a nation's wealth based on the average wages of a McDonald's employee over the cost of a Big Mac. For example, McDonald's employees in poorer countries would not be able to afford the food they serve.
An unemployment rate of 9.6 percent in America may sound bad, but it doesn't include millions of discouraged American workers.
We get analysis of the new unemployment numbers from New York Times correspondent Floyd Norris and Elizabeth Williamson, White House correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.