Thread: Is Unemployment Higher than During 1930's Great Depression

Is Today's U.S. Unemployment Rate Higher than During 1930's Great Depression?

Economics / Great Depression II Oct 25, 2010 - 03:57 PM

By: Washingtons_Blog

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy notes in Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999) that - during Herbert Hoover's presidency, more than 13 million Americans lost their jobs. Of those, 62% found themselves out of work for longer than a year; 44% longer than two years; 24% longer than three years; and 11% longer than four years.

Blytic calculates that the current average duration of unemployment is some 32 weeks, the median duration is around 2o weeks, and there are approximately 6 million people unemployed for 27 weeks or longer. http://www.blytic.com/DashboardView.asp ... 2E9088FC1E

As I noted in January 2009:

In 1930, there were 123 million Americans. http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/census.html

At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the total work force or 11,385,000 people, were unemployed. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/depres24.html#

Will unemployment reach 25% during this current crisis?

I don't know. But the number of people unemployed will be higher than during the Depression.

Specifically, there are currently some 300 million Americans, 154.4 million of whom are in the work force.

Unemployment is expected to exceed 10% by many economists, and Obama "has warned that the unemployment rate will explode to at least 10% in 2009".

10 percent of 154 million is 15 million people out of work - more than during the Great Depression.

Given that the broader U-6 measure of unemployment is currently around 17% (ShadowStats.com puts the figure at 22%), the current numbers are that much worse.

But it is important to look at some details.

For example, official Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers put U-6 above 20% in several states:

* California: 21.9

* Nevada: 21.5

* Michigan 21.6

* Oregon 20.1

And certain races and age groups have gotten hit hard.

According to Congress' Joint Economic Committee: http://jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... a85ac2ce77

By February 2010, the U-6 rate for African Americans rose to 24.9 percent. http://www.cis.org/UnemploymentAmongNativeWorkers

34.5% of young African American men were unemployed in October 2009.

As the Center for Immigration Studies noted last December:

Unemployment rates for less-educated and younger workers:

* As of the third quarter of 2009, the overall unemployment rate for native-born Americans is 9.5 percent; the U-6 measure shows it as 15.9 percent.

* The unemployment rate for natives with a high school degree or less is 13.1 percent. Their U-6 measure is 21.9 percent.

* The unemployment rate for natives with less than a high school education is 20.5 percent. Their U-6 measure is 32.4 percent.

* The unemployment rate for young native-born Americans (18-29) who have only a high school education is 19 percent. Their U-6 measure is 31.2 percent.

* The unemployment rate for native-born blacks with less than a high school education is 28.8 percent. Their U-6 measure is 42.2 percent.

* The unemployment rate for young native-born blacks (18-29) with only a high school education is 27.1 percent. Their U-6 measure is 39.8 percent.

* The unemployment rate for native-born Hispanics with less than a high school education is 23.2 percent. Their U-6 measure is 35.6 percent.

* The unemployment rate for young native-born Hispanics (18-29) with only a high school degree is 20.9 percent. Their U-6 measure is 33.9 percent.

No wonder Chris Tilly - director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UCLA - says that African-Americans and high school dropouts are experiencing depression-level unemployment. http://www.fsrn.org/audio/download/5190 ... TwoWay.mp3

And as I have previously noted, unemployment for those who earn $150,000 or more is only 3%, while unemployment for the poor is 31%. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/04/ ... 50000.html

The bottom line is that it is difficult to compare current unemployment with what occurred during the Great Depression. In some ways things seem better now. In other ways, they don't.

Factors like where you live, race, income and age greatly effect one's experience of the severity of unemployment in America.

In addition, wages have plummeted for those who are employed. As Pulitzer Prize-winning tax reporter David Cay Johnston notes: http://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Perma ... enDocument

Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined....

And see this, http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/ ... ising.html
this, http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2007/08/ ... yment.html
and this. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/10/ ... ssion.html

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article23764.html

and here you have good Slim Shady Barack "YOU LIE" Obama / Marxists / Communists / Progressives / RINO's / NEOCON's wants AMNESTY for 32 - 48 Million Illegal Aliens to give them the opportunity to boot you, your family, your friends. legal Hispanics, African American's, Women, LIBERALS, Conservatives and ESPECIALLY WHITE MIDDLE AGED TEA PARTY UNEMPLOYED MALES out of any and all jobs that are left

Just for the chance of getting more ILLEGAL ALIEN VOTES Into the Ballet Box in an attempted COUP d'eTat of our Republic by Global Elite that want NO Borders and depressed wages for all

you either boot them out of office or suffer the consequences of your inability to comprehend what is going on

[b] “60 Minutesâ€