US Recession - Animation

Pretty freaky to take a look at this (click the link to watch the animation):



The unemployment rates in the US by county - watch how they change over the last two years.

So after you finish watching, you see that things have pretty much faded to black by September of this year.

But perhaps even more interesting are the comments in the article over here. The commenters discuss how the animation can be totally misleading. Note that "alarm colors" like red and orange are used predominantly - even at only 4-5% unemployment (and 4% is considered normal.) Black is the end of the road (dead dead dead) - at 10% unemployment. But in essence, because of the colors, and because there is no interpretation or norms shown or averages over time before or after or in comparison to other countries, you just look at the animation and think: "oh shit." Pretty fascinating what a graphic can do to instill feelings of alarm and panic. If the same graphic had been shown in blues and pinks I am not so sure that it would have looked so terrible.

This said, I read that unemployment statistics from my former home state (Michigan) are over 15%. And Detroit....no big surprise...over 30%. Yesterday, I read a rather alarming article that advertising agency BBDO Detroit will lay off its ENTIRE staff (over 400 people) in response to losing the Chrysler account.