The Slate Job Map

By Chris Wilson

Sept. 15, 2010

As the economic crisis took up permanent residence in the United States in the spring of 2009, Slate attempted to visualize the carnage in a simple and meaningful way. The result was this map, which tracks the losses or gains in jobs in every U.S. county from January of 2007 to the most recently available data.

The map takes a simple approach: Compare the number of jobs in a county to the number 12 months ago, which is necessary since labor is seasonal. If there was a net gain in employed people, we put a blue dot over the county proportional to the number of jobs gained. Likewise, red circles are for lost jobs, also proportional.

Things were looking pretty desperate the last time we updated the map in October 2009. Nearly the entire country had succumbed to a malignant red mist of unemployment. But each time we updated it, hoping for better news, the Flash component that controls the widget got a little more rickety, to the point that it was crashing some browsers.

Now we're unveiling the alpha version of Slate's new and improved mapping tool, displaying data from January 2007 to the most recent figures from over the summer. If you watch the map run or play with the slider on top, you'll see a clear sign of improvement in certain areas. Granted, a small circle over your county in 2010 simply means unemployment hasn't gotten any worse than the horrible 2009 figures. But it's something.