Shag - from your article you linked to above...
Nonsense. In 1938 the unemployment rate was 19.1%, i.e. almost one out of five workers was unemployed, this is from the official Bureau of Census/Bureau of Labor Statistics data series for the 1930s. (same as Marcus' chart which was 19%, well, within .1%...)
If you go by Heritage's little chart... unemployment in 1938 was 28%, 9% higher than the article you state...
Thanks so much for proving my point... even the article you quote uses the unemployment numbers almost everyone else uses for the depression. I would really be interested if you could find anyone who has used Heritage's numbers...
Not cherry picking... examples - I give you the same opportunity - find anyone before the Heritage chart came out that used the same numbers that Heritage uses. Almost 40% unemployment in 1933 - come on...
You obviously can't let go of your source... A bit clingy aren't we?
Here is the entire article (with relevant parts highlighted):
Regarding unemployment during the Great Depression, Andrew Wilson writing at the WSJ recently said:
As late as 1938, after almost a decade of governmental "pump priming," almost one out of five workers remained unemployed.
Historian Eric Rauchway says this is a lie, a lie spread by conservatives to besmirch the sainted FDR.
Nonsense. In 1938 the unemployment rate was 19.1%, i.e. almost one out of five workers was unemployed, this is from the official Bureau of Census/Bureau of Labor Statistics data series for the 1930s. You can find the series in Historical Statistics of the United States here (big PDF) or a graph from Rauchway here. Rauchway knows this but wants to measure unemployment using an alternative series which shows a lower unemployment rate in 1938 (12.5%).
Nothing wrong with that but there's no reason to call people who use the official series liars.
So why are there multiple series on unemployment for the 1930s? The reason is that the current sampling method of estimation was not developed until 1940, thus unemployment rates prior to this time have to be estimated and this leads to some judgment calls. The primary judgment call is what do about people on work relief. The official series counts these people as unemployed.
Rauchway thinks that counting people on work-relief as unemployed is a right-wing plot. If so, it is a right-wing plot that exists to this day because people who are on workfare, the modern version of work relief, are also counted as unemployed. Now if Rauchway wants to lower all estimates of unemployment, including those under say George W. Bush, then at least that would be even-handed but lowering unemployment rates just under the Presidents you like hardly seems like fair play.
Moreover, it's quite reasonable to count people on work-relief as unemployed. Notice that if we counted people on work-relief as employed then eliminating unemployment would be very easy - just require everyone on any kind of unemployment relief to lick stamps. Of course if we made this change, politicians would immediately conspire to hide as much unemployment as possible behind the fig leaf of workfare/work-relief.
There is a second reason we may not want to count people on work-relief as employed and that is if we are interested in the effect of the New Deal on the private economy. In other words, did the fiscal stimulus work to restore the economy and get people back to work? Well, we can't answer that question using unemployment statistics if we count people on work-relief as employed. Notice that this was precisely the context of the WSJ quote.
One final thing that one could do is count people on work-relief as neither employed nor unemployed, i.e. not part of the labor force which is what we do for people in the military. Rauchway has data on this and it shows almost the same thing, nearly one in five unemployed, as the original series. (In this case, however, Rauchway counts nearly one in five unemployed as a win for the New Deal because the same series also shows higher unemployment earlier in the Great Depression.)
Any way you slice it there is no right-wing plot to raise unemployment rates during the New Deal and a historian should not go around calling people liars just because their judgment offends his wish-conclusions.
Remember Heritage is only reporting on "nonfarm-workers" and by every estimate (including the current "official" estimates) their numbers are accurate.
Unemployment wasn't reported until 1940, so any year before that was based on calculation and estimation. From
this link you can find what the various Census' asked and looked for. It wasn't until 1940 that they started focusing on employment status.
Here are the questions from the 1940 Census, and for reference,
here are the questions from the 1930 Census.
As I pointed out earlier, basic calculation from the numbers reported in all the pre-1940 Census info (which also included payroll info) can get you nonfarm worker unemployment.
Anything else is going to be based on estimates because the info just wasn't there to accurately calculate the unemployment for the whole country.
The numbers the article is citing are, once again, the Lebergott 1967 estimates, which are what is reported as the "official" numbers today.
But again, those numbers are estimates, and the non-worker numbers are directly calculated.
Basically, at a certian accuracy level, all you can get a picture of from the numbers given is the non-farm workforce. If you try to include the farm workforce, you reduce the accuracy of the numbers greatly.
And again, the farm area was hit that hardest of any sector (double wammy of Great Depression and massive drought) and was the least effected by New Deal policies at the time (being very much an economic non-entity and very self-reliant), so including them will, to a degree, distort the effects of New Deal legislation.
You are still trying to make a mountain out of a molehill here because the data sets you are looking at are looking at
two different things. One is looking at non-farm workers and one is looking (through estimates) at the entire workforce. It is apples and oranges.
Heritage has always had two very good reasons for looking at the numbers they looked at when evaluating the New Deal:
- non-farm workers are the only area in the economy from that time that accurate and relevant numbers are available from.
- because of the nature of farm life (especially at the time), and the circumstances of the time (massive drought), it's inclusion would distort the effects of the New Deal by looking at area's that arguably weren't effected much by the New Deal at the time (in terms of growing the economy) and were hugely effected by other, very rare, circumstances.
If you are evaluating the effects of the New Deal, especially on unemployment, including non-farm workers is going to distort the picture. Not including them is going to be more accurate.
You are now trying to compare apples to oranges. You started out harping about why Heritage was citing only non-farm workers, and now you are
ignoring that distinction.
To paraphrase
your argument for who tax cuts won't work in the current economic mess; if you are producing nothing, no one can buy anything to consume and the economy spirals downard. That was what was happening in the farming community (and farm economy) in the 1930's due to the drought; they could produce nothing.
All the money in the world could not change that because the weather does what it does regardless of what government does. So any New Deal policy that effected the farming community (AAA, FSA) wouldn't have much of a positive effect on the employment in the farming community at the time, because they were incapable of reversing their shrinking output. It wasn't an incentive issue, it was an issue of ability, and when it isn't raining, you can't grow anything or water your livestock very well.
Not suprisingly, you missed the point in that article I wanted you to get. Can you guess what it was?
