Roosevelt’s Record on Unemployment: The Myth and Reality

We have all seen the unemployment graphs showing the level of joblessness in the 1930s under Roosevelt. Such graphs typically show that unemployment fell form 25% in 1933 to 15% in 1937. But in fact these official statistics do not include the employment provided by emergency and relief work provided by the US federal government. And the reason for this was nothing but an ideological bias on the part of Lebergott who compiled these figures.

When employment provided by relief work is included in the employment figures, unemployment under Roosevelt came down from 25% to just under 10% by 1937. This is a much better record on unemployment than the official statistics reveal. More information can be found on this issue here:

Mitchell, B., “What causes mass unemployment?,” January 11th, 2010.

“(Very) short reading list: unemployment in the 1930s,” October 10, 2008.

The unemployment rate soared again when Roosevelt cut government spending in 1937, but the adjusted figures show it rising from under 10% to about 12.5% in 1938, and not to around 19% in the old figures.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carter, S. B. 2006. “Labor force, employment, and unemployment: 1890–1990,” Table Ba470-477, in S. B. Carter, S. S. Gartner, M. R. Haines, A. L. Olmstead, R. Sutch, and G. Wright, Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Darby, M. R. 1976. “Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934–1941,” Journal of Political Economy 84.1: 1–16.

Lebergott, S. 1964. Manpower in Economic Growth: The American Record since 1800, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Mitchell, B., “What causes mass unemployment?,” January 11th, 2010
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=7261

“(Very) short reading list: unemployment in the 1930s,” October 10, 2008
http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/very-short-reading-list-unemployment-in-the-1930s/

Weir, D. R. 1992. “A Century of U.S. Unemployment, 1890–1990: Revised Estimates and Evidence for Stabilization,” Research in Economic History 14: 301–346.