Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics How will the financial crisis develop?

Facts and figures

Effects of depression in the United States[54]:
13 million people became unemployed. In 1932, 34 million people belonged to families with no regular full-time wage earner.[55]
Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between the years 1929 and 1932.
Homebuilding dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932.
In the 1920s, the banking system in the U.S. was about $50 billion, which was about 50% of GDP.[56]
From the years 1929 to 1932, about 5,000 banks went out of business.
By 1933, 11,000 of the US' 25,000 banks had failed.[57]
Between 1929 and 1933, U.S. GDP fell around 30%, the stock market lost almost 90% of its value.[58]
In 1929, the unemployment rate averaged 3%.[59]
In 1933, 25% of all workers and 37% of all nonfarm workers were unemployed.[60]
In Cleveland, Ohio, the unemployment rate was 60%; in Toledo, Ohio, 80%.[55]
One Soviet trading corporation in New York averaged 350 applications a day from Americans seeking jobs in the Soviet Union.[61]
Over one million families lost their farms between 1930 and 1934.[55]
Corporate profits had dropped from $10 billion three years ago to $1billion in 1932.[55]
Between 1929 and 1932 the income of the average American family was reduced by 40%.[62]
Nine million savings accounts had been wiped out between 1930 and 1933.[55]
273,000 families had been evicted from their homes in 1932.[55]
There were two million homeless people migrating around the country.[55]
One Arkansas man walked 900 miles looking for work.[55]
Over 60% of Americans were categorized as poor by the federal government in 1933.[55]
In the last prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933 only 23,068 came to the U.S.[63][64]
In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than immigrated to it.[65]
The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will. Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated.[66]
New York social workers reported that 25% of all schoolchildren were malnourished. In the mining counties of West Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, the proportion of malnourished children was perhaps as high as 90%.[55]
Many people became ill with diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).[55]
The 1930 U.S. Census determined the U.S. population to be 122,775,046. About 40% of the population was under 20 years.[67]