If you\'ve been paying attention to the news at all for the last several years,
ID: 3052350 • Letter: I
Question
If you've been paying attention to the news at all for the last several years, you know that the unemployment rate in the United States has been a big story. But what did unemployment look like before the economic crisis of the late 2000s? These tables display the average annual unemployment rate for the years from 1992 to 2011. Year 92 93 '94'95 196 197 '98 199 '00 *01 Rate(%) 17.5 6.9 6.1 5.6 5.4 4.9 4.5 4.2 4.0 4.7 Year '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 Rate (%)15.8 6.0 5.5 5.1 4.6 4.6 5.8 9.3 9.6 8.9 1. Use the table to write a verbal description of trends in the unemployment rate over that 20-year period ith enough effort, you were probably able to write a reasonable description. But because there's so much data the table, spotting the trends isn't exactly a simple thing to do. Next, let's look at the same data displayed in aphical form.Explanation / Answer
Clearly, we observe from the table that starting from 1992, until the year 2000, the unemployment rate was on a continuous declining trend, begining with 7.5 in 1992 and ending at 4.0 in 2000. Then, for a short period of 2001 to 2003, the unemployment rate increased from 4.7 to 6.0. After this, the unemployment rate was again on a declining trend starting from 2004 (5.5) till 2007 (4.6). Beyond 2007, there is an never-seen-before sharp increase in the unemployment rate from 5.8 of 2008 till 9.6 in 2010, which eventually settled at 8.9 in 2011.