Originally Posted By: Wonder Boy
 Originally Posted By: M E M
If you take a look at them, you'll notice that unemployment dropped each year up till the time when FDR under fire from conservatives tried to balance the budget. Then it got worse. Plus do those numbers you cite include people employed under government works programs or not?


They are total unemployment figures for each year, yes.
And unemployment, as I showed, never got much below 20% under Roosevelt until W W II.
There was no progress under Roosevelt. It was unquestionably World War II that stopped the Great Depression, not FDR. To say otherwise is just spin and propaganda, that unfortunately liberals are teaching in our schools.



I checked WB and those numbers don't count those people in those works programs. Counting those people the unemployment goes like this...

1933 20.6
1934 16.0
1935 14.2
1936 9.9
1937 9.1
1938 12.5
1939 11.3
1940 9.5

It does jump up in 1938 but then again FDR had tried balancing the budget in 1937. So you have steady improvement under FDR's New Deal for the most part. What would all of those people have done without it?

Fair play!