I keep hearing and reading that today’s economic crisis isn’t as bad as the Great Depression because the unemployment rate is not projected to get anywhere near the 25% unemployment rate recorded then.
But is that really an apples-to-apples comparison? I presume the “work force” then was not defined to include women. Now it is. Also, in the 30s, most people lived on farms (which is of course no longer the case). Were farm workers included in “unemployment” stats?
Can we make any meaningful comparison between unemployment stats of the 1930s and unemployment stats today? Or is the economy too different?
(There may be a simple GQ answer to this, if not, it may turn into a debate. I’ll start the thread in GQ, and we’ll see where it goes.)
Thanks for the correction, Spezza. The point remains that the rural-to-urban ratio was very different then than now. Did that affect calculation of unemployment numbers?
Today, you’re “unemployed” if you’re willing and able to work. Women weren’t willing to work, so why would they be counted? I’m not sure of your line of reasoning that it’s not apples-to-apples.
My point is that a much larger percentage of Americans is in the work force today than in the 30s. (They have to be, unlike the 30s when they could stay on the family farm or in the kitchen.) And so 8% unemployment today might actually represent a larger portion of the total population needing (but not finding) work than 25% unemployment in the 30s.
I don’t know the actual numbers or with certainty how unemployment was calculated then, which is why I started this thread. But let’s say that roughly 60% of all working-age people were off the farm and in the work force by the 30s, leaving 40% on the farm. And let’s say that half of those 60% working-age-non-farm-dwelling people were men (and therefore likely part of the work force) and half were women. Let’s say 10% of those working-age-non-farm-dwelling-women were in the work force and 90% were homemakers.
If all that were true, “25% unemployment” in the 30s might mean that only a little over 8% of the total working-age population (including farm-dwellers and homemakers) was needing but not finding work. Whereas today, because we have far fewer people living on family farms and far fewer women dropping out of the work force to be homemakers, an 8% unemployment figure comes a lot closer to actually meaning that 8% of the total working age population needs but isn’t finding work.
Of course, I pulled all those numbers out of thin air simply to illustrate what I mean when I say we may not be comparing apples to apples.
If I’m right, we will be in Great Depression territory long before hitting 25% unemployment (as unemployment is calculated today).
I think your suspicions/ideas are probably correct, but I think your conclusion is, partly, the wrong way round.
If, for simplicity’s sake, we assume that in 1930 no women worked, and that 25% unemployment means 1 in 4 men were out of work, then 1/4 households had no income.
Whereas, if we simplify again and assume 100% two income households today, 8% unemployment today might mean anything between 4% of households with no income and 8% with a severely reduced income.
Of course this ignores the effect on the level of unemployement caused by people who stop looking for work, which might have been your point.
Furthermore, this does not include those who are underemployed, working part time when the would rather be working full time. The government unemployment figures would be much higher if they accurately represented the willing workforce who is not working full time.
Fear Itself, this is part of my question. I wonder if “unemployment” was calculated in the same way in the 1930s when the notorious 25% unemployment figure was reached, or if a different method was used. Does anyone know?
We’re talking about paid employment. Which in the 1930s women were less likely to seek than today, opting to tend to the house and children instead. I’ll look for a cite if you insist but not going to write a doctoral thesis to prove to you that women used to be more inclined to stay at home in the past than today.
Yes, you did. You claimed that women opted for home over work, because we all know that no one ever refused to hire women and that working as maids/cooks/laundresses/prostitutes/shop-girls/factory-girls/seamstresses/nannies/etc. isn’t really work, right? So make with the citations about all the options available to women in the 1930s.
I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make here. Initially you said women have always worked. I said at that time a significantly lower percentage of the female population had paid employment than they do today. Now you’re harping about the fact that maybe they couldn’t do the kind of work they wanted because of sexual discrimination in hiring, so they didn’t have an option. But regardless of how vast their options were it’s irrelevant to the discussion here.
Actually, the entirety of what I said can be found here. You know, just for your reference because you seemed to have had difficulty reading the entire sentence.
According to the FDR Library and Museum web site:
“At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the total work force or 11,385,000 people, were unemployed. Although farmers themselves technically were not unemployed, drastic drops in farm commodity prices resulted in farmers losing their lands and homes to foreclosure.”
Not to discount the current financial crisis, but I have a lot of trouble deciphering any of the bullshit I see on the TV. Sure there are tons of annecdotal stories of people unable to find jobs and the standard white collar douchebag wearing a fancier version of the “will work for food” placard (instead of doing something to actually find a job), but according to thischart, the current unemployment isn’t even as bad as it was during the 80s.
That’s not to say it isn’t bad, but when I see thousands of displaced families wandering the countryside and hobos living in Hoovertowns in Central Park, then we can start making comparisons to the Great Depression.
