Friday, April 17, 2009
Mapping unemployment
There is a very cool flash movie at the bottom of this page that depicts employment gains and losses by county over the last two years. New jobs are in blue, and lost jobs are in red. The evolution of the national map from blue to red as the months go by makes the point rather well, I'd say.
5 Comments:
By 
SR, at
Fri Apr 17, 01:43:00 PM:
By Georg Felis, at
Fri Apr 17, 02:29:00 PM:
I'm presuming this map is a bit deceptive, lumping government and private employment together. Kansas had a recent time frame where unemployment numbers seemed to be flat, but an increase in government jobs was masking an alarming drop in private employment.
By 
MAS1916, at
Fri Apr 17, 03:32:00 PM:
Curious also that the growing red areas are ones politically controlled by union-allied Democrats.
By John, at
Fri Apr 17, 04:20:00 PM:
Union jobs seem to be good while they last, but as we might see as obvious, they lead to huge cuts and closures in the companies where they operate--except for government jobs where they just consume more taxes.
Map is very revealing. In the last few months, there is no geographical split. Recession? Depression? Cycle?
By BobC, at
Sun Apr 19, 09:50:00 AM:
My local town (Marlborough, Connecticut) is locked in a budget battle that has gotten quite ugly. The school was actually asked to hold the line at 0% increase. Given that 3% in last year's costs went away, not an unreasonable request. However the "mummies" are up in arms over the un-recoverable damage about to be done to the school and their children. Given that UTC has laid off thousands and many many businesses have just plain shut their doors, I think this graph could be quite useful making a point at the next town meeting errr mob.
As the fortunes of the citizens go, so should the government.
I started a town budget website, just the facts, to counter act the obvious lies being spread. It's been useful. Approx 10% of the town's voters have visited. That could swing an election.
