during the us great depression the unemployment rate peaked at
Unemployment in the United States During the 1940s, the U.S Department of Labor, specifically the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), began collecting employment information via monthly household surveys. Other data series are available back to 1912. The unemployment rate has varied from as low as 1% during World War I to as high as 25% during the Great Depression. More recently, it reached peaks of 10.8% in November 1982 and 10.0% in October 2009. Unemployment tends to rise during recessions and fall during expansions. From 1948 to 2015, unemployment averaged about 5.8%. There is always some unemployment, with persons changing jobs and new entrants to the labor force searching for jobs. This is referred to as frictional unemployment. For this reason, the Federal Reserve targets the natural rate of unemployment or NAIRU, which was around 5% in 2015. A rate of unemployment below this level would be consistent with rising inflation in theory, as a shortage of workers would bid wages (and thus prices) upward.[16]
List of recessions in the United States Major modern economic statistics, such as unemployment and GDP, were not compiled on a regular and standardized basis until after World War II. The average duration of the 11 recessions between 1945 and 2001 is 10 months, compared to 18 months for recessions between 1919 and 1945, and 22 months for recessions from 1854 to 1919.[6] Because of the great changes in the economy over the centuries, it is difficult to compare the severity of modern recessions to early recessions.[7] No recession of the post-World War II era has come anywhere near the depth of the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until 1941 and was caused by the 1929 crash of the stock market and other factors.