Watching this can be rather depressing.... enjoy!! [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrP9qJmjIsA&feature=player_embedded[/ame]
Geez, I'm looking at the SE from Late summer 08 to later Summer 09 and it's absolutely brutal. That's deeeeeepressing.
Not to downplay the effects of 10% unemployment, but I couldn't help but notice that they choose dark colors for the top three brackets. In time lapse it made the map look like a growing cancer. I wonder if the effect would have been as dramatic to the eye with some lighter, happier colors.
Things are turning around, especially the last few months. All the doom and gloom in the media lags behind reality.
The employment numbers will lag behind as well. Things are definitely turning already. Scary map indeed, though.
Yeah, I also noticed that the large volume crop (e.g., wheat, corn, soybeans, etc.) agricultural states with the least dependence on large manufacturing industries seem to be less affected during the time period covered by these charts. I suppose farming is a bit more stable than the tech and service industries, if only because the debt-income cycle is seasonal/slower and farms in trouble generally tend to "die off" at a slower rate. Plus, there are fewer of them to begin with. I imagine in the final analysis that agriculture will be slower to fully recover too. Around here the light industry in town has been forced into making some modest layoffs but the farmers still seem to be making a go of it (despite the fact that profits are practically non-existent).