Quote:
Originally posted by Kadath
Right. Well, as much as I like the idea that some of the unemployed are happy to be so, isn't this is the worst rate of uemployment since Hoover?
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Ummm no. Not even close.
If we simply take the average monthly unemployment rate for 2004, 5.6% (admittedly it's only two months of data but, by the vast majority of forecasts, that number will go down the rest of the year rather than up) and compare that to the average monthly unemployment rate in the years prior to 2004 going back to 1948, there are 26 years that come up with higher averages. That's 46% of the 56 years since the data has been tracked having higher rates of unemployment than we have now. Certainly if there are people frustrated with finding work in this economy, many more people were frustrated by unemployment rates averaging 9.7% in 1982, or 8.5% in 1975, or even 6.9% in 1993.
This chart shows unemployment rates going back through '48, obviously there have been periods of much higher unemployment.
