U.S. Unemployment Rates and the History of Recession: A Visual Guide (Map)

November 28, 2009 by Silicon Valley Blogger

We take another peek at national unemployment statistics.

With the stock market all the way up right now and the holidays ringing in some optimism, it’s nice to take a break from our collective gripes about the jobless recovery, massive consumer debt problems and undeserved excesses of big business (which continue to do creative things with their bailout money and our taxpayer dollars).

But then again, I have this soft spot for pretty visuals like the one I featured in an earlier post on California’s unemployment rate history. This time around, I discovered the following graphic which shows U.S. (national) unemployment rates in a colorful map from 2007 to the present. The map shows the state of joblessness in the U.S. each month during a period of economic decline, with lighter shades in the map signifying lower unemployment. The darker colors on the map indicate higher unemployment numbers.

Here are some stills from the slideshow called The Decline: The Geography of A Recession.

U.S. Unemployment Rates (2007 – 2009), Short History of Recession

U.S. unemployment rate history

U.S. unemployment rate history

U.S. unemployment rate history

To run the graphic, please visit this link.

It’s quite interesting to see how the worst hit areas are the Western and Eastern parts of the U.S. (well, along with Alaska and Hawaii). What’s going on in the central states that make them less vulnerable to job losses? And it’s quite concerning to see the large swathes of dark gray areas in the Western part of the U.S.; so it’s no surprise that we’re seeing so many homeowners fall into foreclosure and personal bankruptcy around here.

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