According to Chana Joffe-Walt,
There used to be a lot of jobs that you could do with just a high school degree, and that paid enough to be considered middle class. I knew, of course, that those have been disappearing for decades. What surprised me was what has been happening to many of the people who lost those jobs: They’ve been going on disability.
These charts compare the changes in gross domestic product and unemployment in the United States during the five years after 1929 with the changes in Greece during the five years after 2007.
Five years into the Great Depression, one out of five workers in the United States was unemployed. The economy was nearly 20 percent smaller in 1934 than it had been at the peak, in 1929.
The Greeks can only wish they had it so good.
Special mention
Special mention
Special mention
According to the Economic Policy Institute,
In the fourth quarter of 2012, nationwide unemployment rates were 6.3 percent for whites, 9.8 percent for Hispanics, and 14.0 percent for blacks. These elevated rates are projected to remain essentially unchanged at the end of 2013.
In Illinois, the unemployment rates were 7.0 percent for whites, 9.7 percent for Hispanics, and 17.6 percent for blacks.
Octavi Serra, Mateu Targa, Daniel Llugany and Pau Garcia, HANDS (January 2013)
Special mention
