Great Depression in The United States - Facts and Figures

Facts and Figures

Effects of depression in the U.S.:

• 13 million people became unemployed. In 1932, 34 million people belonged to families with no regular full-time wage earner.
• Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between 1929 and 1932.
• Homebuilding dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932.
• In the 1920s, the banking system in the U.S. was about $50 billion, which was about 50% of GDP.
• From 1929 to 1932, about 5,000 banks went out of business.
• By 1933, 11,000 of the US' 25,000 banks had failed.
• Between 1929 and 1933, U.S. GDP fell around 30%, the stock market lost almost 90% of its value.
• In 1929, the unemployment rate averaged 3%.
• In 1933, 25% of all workers and 37% of all nonfarm workers were unemployed.
• In Cleveland, the unemployment rate was 50%; in Toledo, Ohio, 80%.
• One Soviet trading corporation in New York averaged 350 applications a day from Americans seeking jobs in the Soviet Union.
• Over one million families lost their farms between 1930 and 1934.
• Corporate profits had dropped from $10 billion in 1929 to $1 billion in 1932.
• Between 1929 and 1932, the income of the average American family was reduced by 40%.
• Nine million savings accounts had been wiped out between 1930 and 1933.
• 273,000 families had been evicted from their homes in 1932.
• There were two million homeless people migrating around the country.
• Over 60% of Americans were categorized as poor by the federal government in 1933.
• In the last prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933 only 23,068 came to the U.S.
• In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than immigrated to it.
• With little economic activity there was scant demand for new coinage. No nickels or dimes were minted in 1932–33, no quarter dollars in 1931 or 1933, no half dollars from 1930–32, and no silver dollars in the years 1929–33.
• The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands, including some U.S. citizens, were deported against their will. Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated.
• New York social workers reported that 25% of all schoolchildren were malnourished. In the mining counties of West Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, the proportion of malnourished children was perhaps as high as 90%.
• Many people became ill with diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).
• The 1930 U.S. Census determined the U.S. population to be 122,775,046. About 40% of the population was under 20 years.