The Current Recession

Unemployment
One means for measuring the impact of a recession is to look at the percent unemployment. It’s often difficult to see the trends by just looking a column of numbers. And then to see the trends over all 50 states is even more difficult.

As a statistician, I always appreciated the good use of graphical methods to explain what may be hard to see in the data itself. I commend the people who developed the following graphic to show the trends in unemployment from January 2007 through December 2009. Watch the video below. The darker colors are higher unemployment levels. The darkest color is 10% unemployment or higher.

Go ahead, watch it. It only lasts 1/2 minute. It makes statistics more interesting when good graphical methods are use.

 

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Tennessee Granddaddy Says:

You’ve heard this before, and I may have said it before… but what people remember about you more than anything else is how you make them feel.

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Quote of the Day

Jumping at several small opportunities
may get us there more quickly than waiting
for one big one to come along.
~Hugh Allen

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Joke of the Day

The boss called one of his employees into the office. "Rob," he said, "you've been with the company for a year. You started off in the post room, one week later you were promoted to a sales position, and one month after that you were promoted to district manager of the sales department. Just four short months later, you were promoted to vice-chairman. Now it's time for me to retire, and I want you to take over the company. What do you say to that?"

"Thanks," said the employee.

"Thanks?" the boss replied. "Is that all you can say?"

"I suppose not," the employee said. "Thanks, Dad."

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