Friday, January 22, 2010

Great Recession Geography

Unemployment is bad all over, but the following factoid surprised me:

[For the month of December,] South Carolina, Delaware, Florida, North Carolina and the District of Columbia were each at their highest jobless rates on record.

What's going on in those Sun Belt states?

4 comments:

jenna said...

Cannot respond to the other states, but SC I can. I would say that it is a culmination of selective education and changing dynamics of employmnet available. There is a long history for years of not treating the whole of our population equally. As is noted in the demographics of where the higer levels of unemployment broken down into race, the african-american population, male, is hurting and we have a huge population base in this regard.

Steve said...

I didn't know that Delware is a sunbelt state. Regardless, this is only surprising to me in that its happening now. I always thought what would stop the growth of the sunbelt would be water issues. Water issues are a benefit for the rust belt since the rust belt is also the water belt.

I would be curious if anyone has any ideas why this is happening now, because I can't figure it out.

Jim Russell said...

Steve,

I was referring to the Sun Belt states within that small group experiencing historic economic difficulty.

jenna said...

Usually things are happening NOW due to things having been happening for long periods of time and coming to a point of disintegration or downward spiral. When an area of need is ignored or left to skate by for a long time, decline is on its way. Status quo never wins; reinvestment in people and business is essential. Additionally, during the Clinton era, there was a push to get people off welfare and these very people are the first to lose jobs in an economy like today versus a booming economy of those years.