You seem to imply that direction of movement doesn't matter. It's like saying that there is no reason to be negative when employment figures drop after rising as opposed to employment figures rising after dropping, so long at they end at the same point. Obviously this doesn't add up

Unemployment numbers can be different. It depends on what you are counting. To give an example: Back in 2004, Greece's only access into the Internet was through ...dial-up. Broadband connections were very scarce (0%).

As the numbers were rising from 0% to 1%, 2%, 5% the government was saying that we were "champions in the entire europe, in terms of broadband development"...

Internet users in Greece cringed at such statements, because the reality of the matter was that other countries had 30-40-50% broadband adoption and we were living in stone-age conditions. What mattered to everyone wasn't the increasing curve, but the absolute number - because that absolute number had a tremendous effect on our daily reality (stone age internet) compared to the booming adoption percentage by early adopters paying heavily (like 150 euro per month for a 384kbps connection) that were pushing the 0% to 1-2-5%.