January 9, 2009 By the standards of the 1930s, today's jobless rate is 16.5% <http://layoffblog.com/2009/01/09/by-the-standards-of-the-1930s-todays-j obless-rate-is-165/> Filed under: FYI <http://wordpress.com/tag/fyi/> , US <http://wordpress.com/tag/us/> , unemployment <http://wordpress.com/tag/unemployment/> - 7macaw @ 7:57 am Tags: depression <http://wordpress.com/tag/depression/> , unemployment <http://wordpress.com/tag/unemployment/> , unemployment level <http://wordpress.com/tag/unemployment-level/> , unemployment rate <http://wordpress.com/tag/unemployment-rate/> [I]f unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the 1930s, today's jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent - more than double the stated rate. Under President Lyndon Johnson, the government decided individuals who had stopped looking for work for more than a year were no longer part of the labor force. This dramatically decreased the jobless rate reported by the government. Source: Reuters <http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Economy/idUSTRE5077TM20090109> http://layoffblog.com/2009/01/09/by-the-standards-of-the-1930s-todays-jo bless-rate-is-165/ --------------------------------------- Also: added by a colleague here in Ottawa................. after the initial high unemployment in the U.S. that peaked at around 20 per cent in the early 1930s, the Depression average for the years 1934-1940 was 14.7 per cent, and the lowest annual figure was 14 per cent.
This was the second wave of the Depression after some progress had been made by incorporating people in governmental make-work programs, but furter progress came to a halt. The high unemployment was turned around after the successful German blitzkrieg in May-June 1940, when the U.S. went all-out for producing arms and other supplies for the British and for expanding U.S. defense. By the beginning of 1942, after massive rises in the armed forces, which peaked at 11 million, U.S. civilian employment faced shortages in manpower which was partially countered by employing older retirees, women, and young men who were not draftable. Inflation was contained by rationing and price controls, and forced savings (War Bonds,etc.) which had the effect, not realized at the time, of building up mass public savings which, after the war, fueled postwar economic recovery at the cost of an upward adjustment in the wage and price levels which turned out to be permanent (i.e., deferred inflation which could be tolerated given the simultaneous expansion of the economy as a whole).
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