Just a little graphic to make you cry

This graphic shows the U.S. unemployment rate, by county over a 3 year period. What I thought was, huh, I guess Michigan hasn't changed THAT much then.
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

That map can't be right. It shows a 10%+ un employment rate for Texas and the last figures I saw showed about 3%.

But notice what was happening about the time things started turning bad

carguy123 wrote: That map can't be right. It shows a 10%+ un employment rate for Texas and the last figures I saw showed about 3%. But notice what was happening about the time things started turning bad

You didn't notice the "play" button.

Click on it and see what happens. Hint: It ain't pretty.

It was like watching a plague spread.

The official unemployment figures understate the extent of the problem too. If we used the same formula to calculate as we used during the Depression we'd be around 20% unemployment.

Yeah, I've always wondered why the numbers are "seasonally adjusted". Why can't they just tell us the raw data. XX.X million people are unemployed, there are XXX.X million people in the country. Unemployment is XX.X/XXX.X. Why do they have to "spin" the numbers?

Another thing, the unemployment numbers are based on people drawing unemployment at the time of the survey. It doesn't pick up those who have just given up or are no longer drawing unemployment. I've heard that the rate in Detroit is as high as 55%.

I saw the play button and that's when I realized the map was wrong, at least for our part of the country which makes the rest of the map suspect.

What is it with the central states?
Still looks about the same in western Kansas, western Nebraska, South and North Dakota, Montana.

I have to suspect it because I'm going to assume that a lot of small, rural area's employment rate would actually go up as people flee to the cities for the chance of jobs. Maybe it isn't happening, but something to wonder about.

farming is also a recession proof"ish" job

Actually, thats true. I'm unemployed, yet I'm not counted as I'm ineligible for unemployment benefits as I am, or was, self employed. Double screwed.

I think that's it. There are not a lot of people, they are not packed together with the high density of other parts of the country and agriculture and/or ranching are more than likey the driving forces of their economies.

carguy123 wrote: I saw the play button and that's when I realized the map was wrong, at least for our part of the country which makes the rest of the map suspect.

Where are you looking that you see 3% unemployment for Texas? A quick check with Google shows Jan 2010 unemployment is 8.2%.

"The Texas unemployment rate stood at 8.2 percent in January, unchanged from December, the Texas Workforce Commission said Thursday.

"The Texas unemployment rate held steady over the past two months ... and remained lower than the national rate of 9.7 percent," said Tom Pauken, chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission. "

And (from http://kohm.org/news/?p=23739):

"Amarillo maintained the state’s lowest unemployment rate at 5.6 percent, which isn’t seasonally adjusted. The McAllen-Edinburg-Mission area experienced the highest jobless rate at 11.6 percent."

So some parts of Texas are 10%+, while some are below 6%, and the average is 8.2%. Which is pretty much what the map in the original post shows.

Holy hell, pushing play is scary. What state is that nice chunk of yellow, dead-nuts centre... that's where I'd move to.

In reply to Appleseed:

My father was self employed and when he was out of work he was able to collect. He had to fight and do a bunch of talking to people to find out how, but he had nothing but time anyway.

Lesley wrote: Holy hell, pushing play is scary. What state is that nice chunk of yellow, dead-nuts centre... that's where I'd move to.

Nebraska. Corn isn't eligible to collect unemployment