Contrary to what a number of politicians have asserted in recent days, the current jobless rate is not due to a pervasive desire to cash unemployment checks and lounge around or a desire to become "hobos," as Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) asserted earlier this year.

A new Deloitte study soberly concluded what many employers have suspected for years: The potential employment pool is becoming less and less qualified for the jobs that are available.

More than half of chief financial officers at smaller companies say they plan to hire additional workers in the near future.

According to the latest quarterly survey of CFOs conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, 56.5 percent of CFOs said they plan to hire more people in the next six months. A little more than 28 percent said they have no hiring plans while the rest said it is too soon to determine.

There is little disagreement that the national jobs picture is ugly. The unemployment rate stands at 9.5 percent, unchanged from June 2009. If you include the under-employed, the fed up and not looking crowd, and the frustrated college grads who decided to go back to college, the rate is probably closer to 20 percent.

However, there are some bright spots-okay, let's call them not-as-bad spots-when you break down the job data state by state.

Uh oh.

Hewlett-Packard said it is laying off 9,000 people.

What to say about today's unemployment announcment?

Good news, for sure.  Great news ... hmmm.