Number watching in an economic crisis

I've been keeping my eye on several numbers that are big indicators of where we stand as the economy melts down. The biggest one that I pay attention to is the unemployment rate, which officially spiked to 6.7% today. As the NYTimes blogged about today, that number doesn't account for the 637,000 people that have given up and stopped looking for jobs. If that number were included, it would push the unemployment rate close to 7% - a far cry from the peak of 25% reached in the Great Depression, but a disturbing number nonetheless. The percentage is even more disheartening when you think about the population of the country at both times.

Breaking it down to the heart of the issue in the article:

The share of all men ages and 16 and over who are working is now at its lowest level since the government began keeping statistics in the 1940’s.

Yeah, that's not good.