Give up! It'll help our unemployment rate

A report on the state of the local economy from Sarasota County details a 17.4% drop in the unemployment rate from December 2010 to December 2011 — good news, to be sure.

But the components behind that change are less inspiring.

Two factors can cause changes to the unemployment rate: the total number of area jobs, and the number of people actively seeking work (known officially as the labor force). In this instance, the county report shows both factors contributed significantly to the jobless rate's annualized decline in December.