Unemployment During The Great Depression

Stephanie Tran
U.S. History
Mr. O’Keefe
15 January 2016

Social and Economic Problems Unemployment Caused
The Great Depression was a period of time when the economy was going downhill; farms, businesses, and banks nationwide were failing. In my opinion, and I believe many people will agree to this, unemployment was one of the biggest problems during this time period. Unemployment skyrocketed when the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, which signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. Unemployment caused problems socially and economically. Socially it caused families to be broken up, and economically it caused businesses and banks to shut down. Unemployment caused social problems in the economy. I think that one of the biggest
Many husbands left their wives, which caused mothers to be single mothers, and had children stop going to school and instead forced to work in sweatshops under horrible conditions to help support their families. I have two younger siblings and this made me think, children that are my siblings age were forced to work just to help support their families. I find this so upsetting because they are just children. Not only did the children have a hard time but teenagers were forced to leave their families because their families could no longer afford to feed them. I can not imagine what it would’ve been like back then for the teenagers who were forced to leave their families. I am a teenager myself right now and if my family were to force me to leave because they could no longer feed me, I probably would feel extremely lost and depressed. Women did what they could help, but jobs were hard and paid severely less than males. Still to this day, women are paid less than men and it’s just so unfair. The fact that during the Great Depression women were paid less is just horrible because a lot of men left their wives
This most likely caused the people to not trust banks or governments anymore because I don’t blame them. In my opinion, I think that if the government protected and insured bank accounts then not as many people would’ve lost their saving accounts and if the banks didn’t invest in the stock market then people could get some of their money back. Many banks ended up failing though. In 1929, 600 banks closed. By 1933, 11,000 of the nation’s 25,000 banks had failed. Not only did it affect banks but it also affected businesses; approximately 90,000 businesses went bankrupt. I can’t believe the number of how many businesses went bankrupt because it’s such a huge number! Having that many businesses going bankrupt caused the unemployment rate to increase extremely. Unemployment went from 3% (1.6 million workers) in 1929 to 25% (13 million workers) in 1933. One out of every four workers was out of a job and those who kept their jobs faced pay cuts and reduced hours. The cause of this massive unemployment was because the economy could not sell a lot which caused a decline in production. The rate of inflation was negative which means there was deflation instead. This caused the borrowers to pay back more valuable dollars than the ones they borrowed. The dollar had been cut in half