"Despite today's nearly double-digit unemployment rate, 4 in 10 unemployed Americans expect to get a job in the next four weeks and one in three underemployed have the same expectations with respect to obtaining a full-time job."

That's the finding of a new Gallup poll released yesterday. I guess it's nice that so many Americans remain upbeat in the face of our economic challenges.

But this goes beyond upbeat into pure delusion. As Mish points out, there are around 14.5 million unemployed people. In order to employ 40% of them, businesses would have to create 5.95 million jobs. In December 2009, 300,0000 jobs were created. And that was the strongest month for job creation in over a decade.

There are 8.9 million or so underemployed people, working part time for economic reasons. To employ a third of those, we'd need to create over 3.03 million more jobs.

What this means is that many Americans still have not processed the dire reality of our economic situation.

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