What Color Is Your Parachute 2018 by Richard N. Bolles copy

What’s going on, here? Why such a difference between the two reports?
Well, let me give you a parallel situation, on a much smaller scale.
Suppose I own a dress shop. You come in to visit me, and for fun you
count the number of dresses I have in the shop. It turns out I have 100.
You leave that day, and you don’t return for a whole month. Upon your
return, you count, again for fun, how many dresses I have in the shop now
—one month later. It turns out I have 95. So you say to me, “Oh, I see you
only sold 5 dresses this month. Poor you.”
“No,” I smile, “I added to the inventory during the month.” “How
many?” you ask. “50,” I say.
You stop, and calculate: 100 + 50 minus 95. “Oh, so you actually sold
55 dresses this past month.” I say, “Right.”
5 vs. 55. You get the first figure, if what you’re looking for is the net
change in the size of the inventory in my shop, with visits a month apart;
you get quite a different figure if what you’re looking for is the actual
change in my inventory day by day throughout the entire month.
It’s the same with the two U.S. government reports. Not 5 vs. 55, but
211,000 vs. over 10,000,000.
Of course, the question for us when we’re out of work is, “If there are
typically eight to ten million jobs available each month, why didn’t I get
one of them?” That’s the subject of the rest of this book.