

The Geography of a Recession - rafaelc
http://www.latoyaegwuekwe.com/geographyofarecession.html

======
anthuswilliams
Interesting. I notice my county, in southwestern Utah, is at the 2% mark, but
my own limited experience suggests that might be a rather conservative
estimate. A couple idle speculations as per the study:

1) I know many people who have responded to the recession by attempting to
start a business (usually involving a depressingly harebrained business plan).
These people often fall victim to Kelly Felix-inspired "make money on the
Internet" or other affiliate marketing schemes. I could imagine some of these
people, when being surveyed, saying that they did not currently desire a job.

2) Many adults, and recent high-school graduates, who otherwise would not be
attending college, are attending college now, thanks to the high availability
of student benefits and lack of other options. I don't think the study
factored these people (I don't know what criteria one could use to do so
anyway), but if it had, I'll bet the resulting unemployment rate would be
higher nationwide.

------
gry
This is a dark pattern.

It plays with color spectrum, pitting red against violet. Not fair. Roy G.
Biv?

Now, there are some messed up things like the south -- it appears severe on
state borders, thought the black line probably compounds it.

There is something very interesting and valuable here, yet it doesn't feel
honest.

\--

EDIT: Reviewing the color spectrum red and violet are next to each other. It
felt more severe than it was. Perhaps because violet is compressed into 3
percentage points (purple, violet and dark purple), while there is red,
orange, orange-yellow, yellow and cream for the "good-ish", all strong and not
neutral.

~~~
athst
I agree - the data this depicts is indeed very scary, but unfortunately their
use of color is a little manipulative and detracts from it.

10%+ should not be total black - there's no reason to make that the extreme,
especially when you consider that the real rate of employment could be around
18-19%, and in the Great Depression it was even worse than that.

~~~
roel_v
I hope you mean 'real rate of UNemployment' ?

------
vital101
Im my opinion (Michigan resident), the best part about this map is that it
illustrates that Michigan was already in a recession well before the rest of
the country was.

~~~
bfung
And Alabama plus the border or Arkansaw, whats up with that!? California and
the Northwest didn't really surprise me since there's a lot of people and not
being in tech makes things hard out there.

~~~
houseabsolute
Unproductive labor (poor education, lack of human capital), few natural
resources, zany state economic policies. These are my guesses.

------
david927
Not a recession, a depression.

I would like to see these numbers for the percent jobless, which will provide
a much better indicator of the depth of the problem.

------
pontifier
What inferences can be made from this? Many of the states that seem to be
holding out have low populations so the real picture may be far more bleak
than it appears... see a population density corrected map here:
<http://www.pnas.org/content/101/20/7499/F1.expansion.html>

~~~
houseabsolute
I'm not trying to offend with this comment, but I surely will regardless.
Those states that had those low numbers tend to be the ones where people on
the whole would not choose to live unless they had a specific reason to do so.
A job, for instance.

------
dbrannan
It would be interesting to see this with migration rate, too.

------
holdenc
Quite a fascinating graphic. If it shows anything, it's that this recession is
deep and wide, and far from over.

------
JoeAltmaier
Why on earth would a recession be geographic, in the information age? Could it
be that the information age is a myth?

~~~
PotatoEngineer
Because not all jobs are information-related? There's still an awful lot of
brick and mortar out there, and plenty of regional retail shops.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...so the Information Age is a myth. Most folks are NOT participating in the
Internet Revolution, as indicated by the chart's geographic locality of
employment.

------
funthree
hurrah for nebraska!

~~~
giardini
Small population with a higher-than-average percentage employed by government.

~~~
jonah
Those same could be said for Alaska as well, yet it has higher unemployment. I
wonder what the other factors are - I suspect it has to do with industry to
some extent - farming vs. natural resources extraction.

~~~
anthuswilliams
Omaha is a pretty respectable business nexus. I can't think of an Alaskan city
with a similar situation.

