Monday, November 30, 2009

O Mark Twain, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

Peak unemployment during GD1 = 22%
Unemployment in Detroit today = 29% (and rising!)

Need one say more?

1 comment:

Necropraxis said...

What area does your GD1 statistic cover? Is that the US? The industrialized world? Europe? In any case, the comparison of one city with a (presumably) larger area does not say very much. And, that one city has been in trouble for a while. (*)

Yes, I think you do need say more.

One non-systematic statistic that I pulled off the web:

"In 1933 Utah's unemployment rate was 35.8 percent, the fourth highest in the nation, and for the decade as a whole it averaged 26 percent."

-- utah.gov

And that's a whole state. Why don't you compare the worst hit city during GD1 to Detroit? I looked briefly for that bit of info but could not locate it quickly.

(*) See also:

Thomas J. Sugrue - The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

David Halberstam - The Reckoning