Thursday, May 14, 2009

Unemployment, geography, and maps

A follow-up to this post on why geography matters, particularly when it comes to issues like unemployment.

Chris Wilson at Slate has an awesome county-by-county mapping of unemployment, and over time since 2007. You will see how the slowly blue (jobs gained) changes to red (jobs lost). It is almost like the spread of infection, from Michigan. No, I am not saying that Michigan triggered job losses. Not at all. But, if one did not know what the data were, then that reader might think something started in Michigan and spread everywhere ..... Wilson writes:
A map of employment gains or losses by county tells the story of how those job losses first struck in the most vulnerable regions and then spread rapidly to the rest of the country. As early as August 2007, for example—several months before the recession officially began—jobs were already on the decline in southwest Florida; Orange County, Calif.; much of New Jersey; and Detroit, while other areas of the country remained on the uptick.

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