In Response to the Unending Mantra of "The Worst Since"

I have a friend who sent me a note saying:

"...if my numbers are correct we are close to passing the Great Depression.

1930 US population 123,202,620
2008 US population 303,824,650
1930 Unemployed 25% or 30,800,655
2008 Unemployed 7.6% or 23,090,673
Differenece 7,709,982 in todays standard thats not a lot of people.

Thanks George Bush"

I had to respond...and as a tutorial of statistical analysis, I hope you enjoy:

All data below are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

First of all, the unemployment rate is not the percentage of all people, but employable non-farm workers...currently there are 13.0 million people unemployed out of a civilian workforce of 153.4 million or 8.5% in January (not seasonally adjusted--real numbers).

In 1982 and 1983, the annual unemployment rate was higher at 9.7% and 9.6%, respectively.

Remember, you have to use the rate of unemployment because there are so many more people employed...I could easily say that there are 132.3 million people employed right now much higher (by almost 4 times) than the approximately 34.3 million that were employed during the worst of the Depression.

January had the lowest employment level in 48 months, since FEBRUARY 2005; however, more people are working in the US now than at any time from 1776 to 2004.

Now, of course, if you are one of the 13 million unemployed, you are hurting right now, but there are jobs out there--according to the BLS, over 3 million jobs are unfilled right now, according to their surveys, and the survey DOES NOT count all available jobs.