The animation, developed by Latoya Egwuekwe using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, presents a time-lapse image of U.S. unemployment over the last three years. In January of 2007, a year prior to the "official" start of this recession, the map looked like this:
Counties in gray and beige had relatively high employment (97% or more), while the counties in darker colors had higher unemployment. The national unemployment rate at that time was 4.6%.
Fast-forward to December of last year, the most recent month for which statistics are available, and the map looks like this:
In just three years the national unemployment rate had more than doubled to 9.3%, and that didn't account for millions of under-employed Americans and those who had abandoned altogether their search for work.
The two images I've posted are plenty startling enough, but you really need to go to the animation page and watch the stain of joblessness creep across our country.
Recovery? My ass.
I've been back working for about four months now, but I haven't forgotten the pain of the preceding two-plus years. I'm also neither naive nor so ideologically deluded as to think that we've "recovered" from anything.
This is only the beginning.
