Area Illusion
In the last few months, there has been a flurry of hand-wringing about the high level of US unemployment, currently running at about 9 per cent. But what is equally striking is the variation between regions: while some places such as North and South Dakota, or Nebraska, had rates below 5 per cent in December 2010, Florida, California and Nevada all posted rates above 10 per cent.And it’s true that if you look at a map, it seems as if there are large regions with low unemployment:
What you really want to do is compare large US states with large European nations. And there aren’t any low-unemployment large states. Yes, there’s a divergence: New York and Texas have unemployment rates of 8.2 and 8.3 percent, respectively, while California’s rate is 12.5. But that’s nothing like the divergence between Germany, with a 6.6 rate, and Spain, with a 20.2 rate.
For the most part, all of America is sharing in this slump.
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