The levitating unemployment rate

Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi who is accurate less often than a broken clock tells us just how grim things are economically in Gaza:

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - A group of Palestinian women is breaking new ground in the Gaza Strip by working as ditch-diggers to support their families.

Some 300 women have signed up to dig reservoirs on Gaza farms in a project organized by the internationally funded Union of Agriculture Work Committees, UAWC officials said Thursday.

Although Gaza women have traditionally worked on family farms, picking fruit and vegetables, this is the first time they have hoisted shovels for a job usually reserved for men in the conservative enclave, where unemployment is 60 per cent.

The CIA Factbook reflects Gaza unemployment at 40 percent as of 2009.  And the latest data we've seen, published in today's Firas Press, reports unemployment at 33.9 percent.

From where does al-Mughrabi get his 60 percent figure?  He doesn't say.

Perhaps from the same place as his Gaza export data.

hat tip: EoZ