Unemployment in the United States

As of April 2010, the unemployment rate in the United States was 9.9%, but the government’s broader U-6 unemployment rate was 17.1%.[1] There are six unemployed people, on average, for each available job.[2] Men account for at least 7 of 10 workers who lost jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.[3] The youth unemployment rate was 18.5% in July 2009, the highest July rate since 1948.[4] 34.5% of young African American men were unemployed in October 2009.[5] Officially, Detroit’s unemployment rate is 27%, but the Detroit News suggests that nearly half of this city’s working-age population may be unemployed.[6] 3.8 million Americans lost their jobs in 2009.[2]

In Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in the Twentieth-Century America, economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway argue that the empirical record of wages rates, productivity, and unemployment in American validates the classical unemployment theory. Their data shows a strong correlation between the adjusted real wage and unemployment in the United States from 1900 to 1990. However, they maintain that their data take into account exogenous events.


Statistics

Estimated U.S. Unemployment rate from 1800-1890. All data are estimates based on data compiled by Lebergott.[7] See limitations section below regarding how to interpret unemployment statistics in self-employed, agricultural economies. See image info for complete data.
Estimated U.S. Unemployment rate from 1890-2010. 1890–1930 data are from Romer.[8] 1930–1940 data are from Coen.[9] 1940–2009 data are from Bureau of Labor Statistics.[10][11] See image info for complete data.


Unemployment in popular culture

John Steinbeck's 1939 novel Grapes of Wrath is set during the Great Depression and focuses on the Joads, a poor family of sharecroppers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Broader U-6 Unemployment Rate Increases to 17.1% in April". The Wall Street Journal. May 7, 2010.
  2. ^ a b "Unemployment sets a grim record in 2009". Msnbc.msn.com. December 31, 2009.
  3. ^ "Revenge of the white men". Los Angeles Times. March 22, 2010 (Page 2 of 2).
  4. ^ "Employment and Unemployment Among Youth Summary". United States Department of Labor.
  5. ^ "Blacks hit hard by economy's punch". The Washington Post. November 24, 2009.
  6. ^ "Nearly half of Detroit's workers are unemployed". The Detroit News. December 16, 2009.
  7. ^ Stanley Lebergott (1964). Manpower in Economic Growth: The American Record since 1800. Pages 164-190. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  8. ^ Christina Romer (1986). "Spurious Volatility in Historical Unemployment Data", The Journal of Political Economy, 94(1): 1–37.
  9. ^ Robert M. Coen (1973). "Labor Force and Unemployment in the 1920s and 1930s: A Re-Examination Based on Postwar Experience", The Review of Economics and Statistics, 55(1): 46–55.
  10. ^ Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population, 1940 to date. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
  11. ^ "Historical Comparability" (2006). Employment and Earnings. Household Data Explanatory Notes, February 2006.

External links