Your Recession in Charts

categories: Federal, Government, Housing, Jobs & Unemployment, Policy, Research, States, stimulus, The Economy

Published November 02, 2009 @ 01:52PM PT

Last week President Obama touted 640,000 jobs were created or saved via the stimulus. No doubt the stim, as we're apparently calling it now, has had some positive impact. (Though if it's behind the endless road improvements going on in the Greater Boston area that's driving me insane, pun intended, then I might have to rethink this whole public works investment concept!)

But eminent economist Joseph Stiglitz pronounces the recovery "nowhere near" over and the myriad charts our friends at Calculated Risk and the Wall Street Journal certainly suggest as much. WSJ has an interactive map of stimulus spending by state, including jobs saved and current unemployment rates. 15% unemployment in Michigan! It's almost 30% in Detroit.

Calculated Risk has the gruesome images, including the above graph demonstrating a national unemployment rate of 9.8% (as of September 30), the highest in 26 years.

This one's particularly depressing and an alarmist favorite; I think in part because the lines look so chaotic:

Rental vacancy rates are at a record 11.1%:

And it's likely rents will continue to decline through 2010. Hopefully this is helpful to our low-income neighbors, and not due to rising vacancies based on our neighbors now being homeless.

Personal bankruptcies are up 41% from last year:

And finally, Fannie Mae conventional single-family loans that are in serious delinquency. CR calls this "the monthly Fannie Mae hockey stick graph":

Unemployment, rental vacancies, bankruptcies, and delinquent home loans! One more time, here's the one of jobs saved or created nationwide, so as not to leave you weeping quietly at your computer. Yep, we've got work to do.

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Comments (2)

If your trying to tell us our President wasted an A-load of money,(that could have helped many more people,) we are already aware of this.

(Where are you right now Ms. Jan? Do you need anymore proof that, "Obama's way," doesn't work?)

I would be laughing, saying,"I told you so;" if this weren't so serious. I would look toward the "Right," for help, but just like the "Left," they can't tell the truth about anything. One side underestimates the poverty level, and the other side thinks anyone who can't afford a Lexus is in poverty. (I'm just tired of being lied to, and I want a "middle-grounder" to step in; fix this mess .)

Posted by L.S. hope on 11/02/2009 @ 07:57PM PT
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The truth of the matter is we trusted Washington to solve our problems (or those foolish enough to thing that "hope" and "change" come from the government did) and they just made it worse. We would have been better off just putting a hold on all personal and small business taxes for a year! We'd still be in deep financial trouble but think of all the jobs that would create and how much extra money people would have to stimulate the economy. All the stimulus plan helped was the wallets of the favored on Wall St. and special interest groups who are making off quite nicely these days...

Posted by Seth Piepgrass on 11/04/2009 @ 06:11PM PT
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Author

Leigh is a PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT, and a consultant on U.S. Gulf Coast recovery. She sits on the Board of the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston, and has worked with non-profits, foundations and local governments on policies and programs aimed at reducing urban poverty and inequality.