Your Recession in Charts

Last week President Obama touted 640,000 jobs were created or saved via the stimulus.  No doubt the stim, as we're apparently calling it now, has had some positive impact.  (Though if it's behind the endless road improvements going on in the Greater Boston area that's driving me insane, pun intended, then I might have to rethink this whole public works investment concept!)

But eminent economist Joseph Stiglitz pronounces the recovery "nowhere near" over and the myriad charts our friends at Calculated Risk and the Wall Street Journal certainly suggest as much.  WSJ has an interactive map of stimulus spending by state, including jobs saved and current unemployment rates.  15% unemployment in Michigan!  It's almost 30% in Detroit.

Calculated Risk has the gruesome images, including the above graph demonstrating a national unemployment rate of 9.8% (as of September 30), the highest in 26 years.

This one's particularly depressing and an alarmist favorite; I think in part because the lines look so chaotic:

Rental vacancy rates are at a record 11.1%:

And it's likely rents will continue to decline through 2010.  Hopefully this is helpful to our low-income neighbors, and not due to rising vacancies based on our neighbors now being homeless.

Personal bankruptcies are up 41% from last year:

And finally, Fannie Mae conventional single-family loans that are in serious delinquency.  CR calls this "the monthly Fannie Mae hockey stick graph":

Unemployment, rental vacancies, bankruptcies, and delinquent home loans!  One more time, here's the one of jobs saved or created nationwide, so as not to leave you weeping quietly at your computer. Yep, we've got work to do.