Great Depression and Modern Times
The great depression is very similar to the recession we are in now especially in Michigan. The similarities are the low employment rate for one. Currently according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 9.1% of the United States labor force is unemployed, During the great depression the unemployment rose up to 25% of americans who were without a job. That is a big deal when it comes to the economy because if people don't have jobs they don't have money to spend so while companies are overproducing products and nobody has money to buy them so the companies end up making to many products and not selling them. Another similarities of today's recession and the Great Depression is the stock market. During the Great Depression the Dow Jones Industrial Average went as low as -89.2% and in todays recession it has gotten as low as -53.8% even though that is only a little over half as low as it was during the great depression it is still a significant amount. Overproduction happened a lot during the Great Depression and it is happening now, too. Overproduction creates more products than are purchased or needed and this creates problems for companies because they are spending money on creating the products and not receiving money in return for the products because people are not buying them. During the great depression there was around 1,500,000 homeless people that did not have a place to stay. There are 643,067 homeless people now according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is a problem because the more people homeless there are on the streets the more crime there is.
