unemployment

A few of the 50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe References available at original article.

1. 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be "low income" or impoverished.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

12. Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

31. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

32. According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America's biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.

33. Today, the "too big to fail" banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

34. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

37. A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.

The transition from communism to capitalism in Europe and central Asia during the early to mid-1990s has had devastating consequences for health: UNICEF attributes more than 3 million premature deaths to transition; the UN Development Programme estimates over 10 million missing men because of system change; and more than 15 years after these transitions began, only a little over half of the ex-communist countries have regained their pre-transition life-expectancy levels...

Our study has shown that mass privatisation programmes were associated with a short-term increase in mortality rates in working-aged men. Furthermore, increased unemployment rates during this time were strongly associated with mortality in countries of the former Soviet Union.

Our results accord with other data... Overall, countries that pursued mass privatisation in the early to mid-1990s had sharp drops in life expectancy; in those that did not, life expectancy dipped modestly, but then steadily improved. Unemployment rates followed a similar trend: increases were pronounced in countries that privatised rapidly but much more modest in countries that privatised more slowly. Four of the five worst countries, in terms of life expectancy, had implemented mass privatisation, whereas only one of the five best performers had done so.