Statistics of the Great Depression

By the Numbers

The Economy During the Great Depression

US Gross Domestic Product (current dollars)
The Great Crash, 1929-1933
in 1929: $103.6 billion
in 1930: $91.2
in 1931: $76.5
in 1932: $58.7
in 1933: $56.4

New Deal Recovery and Recession, 1934-39
in 1934: $66.0 billion
in 1935: $73.3
in 1936: $83.8
in 1937: $91.9
in 1938: $86.1
in 1939: $92.2

Mobilization for WWII, 1940-1945
in 1940: $101.4 billion
in 1941: $126.7
in 1942: $161.9
in 1943: $198.6
in 1944: $219.8
in 1945: $223.1

The overall size of the American economy, measured by gross domestic product, sharply declined following the crash on Wall Street—from $103.6 billion in 1929 to $66 billion in 1934. The economic recovery of 1933-1937, among the most dramatic in US history, saw double-digit annual gains, although a tax increase and cutback in government spending in 1937 threw the economy back into recession. Complete recovery from the economic misery of the Great Depression only arrived after 1940, when mobilization for World War II caused a huge increase in industrial production; between 1940 and 1945, GDP more than doubled in current dollars.¹
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Growth of Government During the Great Depression

Government Expenditures and Investments (in current dollars)
Hoover Administration, 1929-1939
in 1929: $9.4 billion
in 1930: $10.0
in 1931: $9.9
in 1932: $8.7
Average government spending as percentage of GDP, 1929-32: 12.0%

Roosevelt's New Deal
in 1933: $8.7 billion
in 1934: $10.5
in 1935: $10.9
in 1936: $13.1
in 1937: $12.8
in 1938: $13.8
in 1939: $14.8
Average government spending as percentage of GDP, 1933-39: 15.4%

Mobilization for WWII
in 1940: $15.0 billion
in 1941: $26.5
in 1942: $62.7
in 1943: $94.8
in 1944: $105.3
in 1945: $93
Average government spending as percentage of GDP, 1940-45: 35.3%

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal greatly increased the size and scope of government during the 1930s, then World War II increased government spending even more dramatically in the early 1940s, skyrocketing to consume nearly half the US economy during World War II.²
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Unemployment During the Great Depression

Average rate of unemployment
in 1929: 3.2%
in 1930: 8.9%
in 1931: 16.3%
in 1932: 24.1%
in 1933: 24.9%
in 1934: 21.7%
in 1935: 20.1%
in 1936: 16.9%
in 1937: 14.3%
in 1938: 19.0%
in 1939: 17.2%³

Full and healthy employment in 1929 at 3.2% abruptly shifted with the crash on Wall Street and ensuing global depression. Rising unemployment reached double-digits in late 1930, and the situation continued to deteriorate through the bleak winter of 1932-33, when well over a quarter of all workers were unable to find jobs. The New Deal helped to reduce unemployment from 1933 through 1937, when another economic recession briefly caused a resurgence in joblessness. Full employment did not return until the war years of the early 1940s.

To put Great Depression unemployment in context, consider that the highest annual unemployment rate ever recorded after 1940 was 9.7% in 1982.⁴ The average rate between 1998-2008 (including the 2002 recession) was 5%, and as of December 2008 (during a time of serious economic turmoil) unemployment stood at 7.2% nationally.⁵

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The Great Crash on Wall Street

Dow Jones Industrial Average
Peak in September 1929: 381.17
Trough in July 1932: 41.22

The Great Crash of October 1929 was only the beginning of four years of steady decline in stock values on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one measure of the health of the stock market as a whole, lost nearly 90% of its value between 1929 and 1932. Amazingly, the Dow would not reach a value higher than its 1929 peak until 23 November 1954, a full quarter-century after the Great Crash.⁶

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Political Participation During the Great Depression

Civilian Population of Voting Age
in 1932: 75.7 million
in 1934: 77.9 million
in 1936: 80.1 million
in 1938: 82.2 million

Percentage of Eligible Voters Who Cast Ballots in General Elections
in 1920: 43.5%
in 1924: 43.9%
in 1928: 51.9%
in 1932: 52.5%
in 1936: 57.0%
in 1940: 59.2%
in 1944: 52.9%

Estimated audience for Father Charles Coughlin's weekly radio program by the end of 1932: 30-45 million
Estimated number of Americans who signed Townsend Plan petitions by 1935: 25 Million
Estimated number of Americans subscribed to the mailing list of Huey Long's Share Our Wealth clubs by 1935: 7.5 million
Estimated membership of Communist Party USA in 1934: 30,000
Estimated membership of German-American Bund (Nazi sympathizers) in 1938: 25,000

While fewer than half of all voters participated in general elections throughout much of the 1920s, a steady climb in voter participation occurred from 1928 through 1940, as more voters took the opportunity to cast votes for (or against) President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Participation in non-electoral political activities also increased during the Depression, as charismatic figures such as Father Coughlin, Francis Townsend, and Huey Long developed enthusiastic followings. Revolutionary parties on the far left (communists) and far right (fascists) frightened many Americans, but never gained more than a fringe following.⁷

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Entertainment During the Great Depression

Average Weekly Movie Attendance
in 1927: 57 million
in 1930: 90 million
in 1931: 80 million
in 1932: 60 million
in 1933: 50 million

Contrary to some popular mythology, the film industry was not 'Depression-Proof' and suffered a steep decline along with the fortunes of the nation as a whole. Cinema attendances soared after the 1927 introduction of "talkies" (movies with full sound). But weekly viewership peaked at 90 million tickets in 1930, then declined by more than a third by 1933.⁸
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Family Life in the Great Depression

Fertility Rates (per 100,000 women aged 15-44)
in 1928: 93.8
in 1929: 89.3
in 1930: 89.2
in 1931: 84.6
in 1932: 81.7
in 1933: 76.3
in 1934: 78.5
in 1935: 77.2
in 1936: 75.8
in 1937: 77.1
in 1938: 79.1
in 1939: 77.6
in 1940: 79.9
in 1941: 83.4
in 1942: 91.5
in 1943: 94.3
in 1944: 88.8
in 1945: 85.9

The widespread poverty of the Great Depression caused dramatic changes to family life as young couples, worried about their finances, put off having children. The US fertility rate (the number of children born to women aged 15-44) declined by nearly 20% from 1928 1935. Fertility rates recovered somewhat during World War II, which brought renewed prosperity to America. However, the war created its own impediments to fertility, as millions would-be American fathers were stationed overseas in the military. After 1945, Americans made up for 15 years of long-deferred babymaking by reproducing at record rates, creating the so-called 'Baby Boom'; from 1946-64, the average fertility rate was a sky-high 113.4 per 100,000.⁹

Average divorce rate, (per 1,000 people)
1920-1929: 1.6
1930-33: 1.4
1934-39: 1.8
1940-46: 2.8
1947-64: 2.5

The economic hardship of the Depression made couples somewhat less likely to divorce, as individuals (especially women) stuck in unhappy marriages often decided to tough it out rather than risk financial ruin by leaving their spouses. The very different tensions caused by World War II, by contrast, brought a spike in the divorce rate, and divorce rates throughout the postwar period never fell back to levels as low as in the 1930s.¹⁰

Average rate of death by suicide (per 100,000 population)
1920-1928: 12.1
1929: 18.1
1930-1940: 15.4

The Great Crash of 1929, which suddenly brought economic ruin to thousands of people accustomed to a decade of prosperity, caused an immediate and dramatic spike in suicides. Suicide rates, which averaged 12.1 per 100,000 people in the decade prior to the Depression, jumped to an alarming 18.9 in the year of Wall Street's crash. The suicide rate remained higher than normal throughout the remainder of the Great Depression, then fell sharply during World War 

Below is a partial list of New Deal "alphabet agencies" and their primary function (relief, recovery, or reform).

AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT (Recovery)
Created in 1933, he AAA paid farmers for not planting crops in order to reduce surpluses, increase demand for seven major farm commodities, and raise prices.  Farm income rose, but many tenants and share-croppers were pushed into the ranks of the unemployed.  In 1936 the Supreme Court voided the AAA.

CCC Barracks, Camp Euclid, Ohio September 1936

CIVIL WORKS ADMINISTRATION (Relief)
Created in 1933, the CWA employed four million people--paid an average of $15 a week--many in useful construction jobs such as repairing schools, laying sewer pipes, building roads.  Some CWA jobs, however, were criticized as useless (e.g., leaf raking).  Roosevelt disbanded the program after less than a year.
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (Relief)
The FSA was created in 1937 (formerly called the Resettlement Administration in 1935) to aid sharecroppers.  The FSA set up temporary housing for "Okies" and "Arkies" (Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma and Arkansas) who migrated to California in hope of finding work.
FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORP. (Reform)
To restore confidence in banks and encourage savings, Congress created the FDIC to insure bank customers against the loss of up to $5,000 their deposits if their bank should fail.  Created by the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act of 1933, the FDIC is still in existence.

FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMIN. (Relief)
Created in 1933, FERA supported nearly five million households each month and funded thousands of work projects for the unemployed.  It also provided vaccinations and literacy classes for millions of poor people.

FEDERAL HOUSING ADMINISTRATION (Recovery)
The FHA was created in 1934 to stimulate the building industry by providing small loans for home construction.  A related program, also created in 1934, was the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC).
INDIAN REORGANIZATION ACT (Reform)
The Indian Removal Act of 1934 (called the "Indian New Deal, reversed the forced-assimilation policies in effect since the Dawes Act of 1887.  The IRA tried to stop the loss of Indian lands and encouraged Native American tribes to establish local self-government and to preserve their native crafts and traditions.
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT (Reform)
The NLRA (also called the Wagner Act) of 1935 created the National Labor Relations Board to protect the rights or organized labor to organize and collectively bargain with employers.
NATIONAL RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION (Recovery)
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 created the NRA to promote economic recovery by ending wage and price deflation and restoring competition.  The NRA set business codes and quotas.  Under its symbol of a blue eagle and slogan ("We Do Our Part"), the NRA temporarily restored investor confidence and consumer morale, but it failed to stimulate industrial production.  In 1935 the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional.
NATIONAL YOUTH ADMINISTRATION (Relief)
Created under the Emergency Relief Act of 1935, the NYA provided more than 4.5 million jobs for young people.
PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATION (Relief/Recovery)
Established by the NIRA in 1933, the PWA was intended both for industrial recovery and unemployment relief.  Eventually over $4 billion was spent on 34,000 construction projects including public buildings, highways, bridges (e.g., San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge), and dams for water and power.
RURAL ELECTRIFICATION ADMINISTRATION (Reform)
Before the New Deal, only 10 percent of the country outside cities and towns had electricity.  The REA (1935) gave low-cost loans to farm cooperatives to bring power into their communities.  By 1941, the REA succeeded in raising to 40 percent the number of farms with electricity.
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (Reform)The SEC was created in 1934 to serve as a federal "watchdog" administrative agency to protect public and private investors from stock market fraud, deception and insider manipulation on Wall Street.  The SEC is still in existence [its reputation was tarnished a bit by the Enron collapse in 2001-02].
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (Reform)The Social Security Act of 1935 established the SSA to administer a national pension fund for retired persons, an unemployment insurance system, and public assistance programs for dependent mothers, children, and the physically disabled.  The pension was financed by a payroll tax to begin in 1937.  It exists to this day as the nation's most important and expensive domestic program, covering over 40 million Americans and accounting for about one-fourth of the federal budget.

Wilson Dam  Location : Alabama May 30, 1933: TVA

TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (Reform)  Perhaps the most ambitious undertaking of the New Deal, the TVA was a comprehensive federal agency created in 1933 for the economic development of the Tennessee River watershed.  The TVA built twenty dams to control flooding, generate hydroelectrical power, increase agricultural production, and revitalize the Tennessee Valley region.  The TVA also provided jobs, low-cost housing, reforestation and other services.


WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION (Relief)
Established under the $4.8 billion Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the WPA lasted until 1943 and employed at least 8.5 million people at an average of $2 a day.  They built thousands of roads, bridges, schools, post offices and other public construction projects.  In addition, under the WPA's Arts Program, thousands of unemployed writers, musicians, artists, actors, and photographers temporarily went on the federal payroll, producing public projects ranging from murals to national park guidebooks.*

Images of the Great Depression

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange just after the crash of 1929. On Black Tuesday, October twenty-ninth, the market collapsed. In a single day, sixteen million shares were traded--a record--and thirty billion dollars vanished into thin air. Westinghouse lost two thirds of its September value. DuPont dropped seventy points. The "Era of Get Rich Quick" was over. Jack Dempsey, America's first millionaire athlete, lost $3 million. Cynical New York hotel clerks asked incoming guests, "You want a room for sleeping or jumping?" Source

Police stand guard outside the entrance to New York's closed World Exchange Bank, March 20, 1931. Not only did bank failures wipe out people's savings, they also undermined the ideology of thrift. Source

Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

World War I veterans block the steps of the Capital during the Bonus March, July 5, 1932 (Underwood and Underwood). In the summer of 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, World War I veterans seeking early payment of a bonus scheduled for 1945 assembled in Washington to pressure Congress and the White House. Hoover resisted the demand for an early bonus. Veterans benefits took up 25% of the 1932 federal budget. Even so, as the Bonus Expeditionary Force swelled to 60,000 men, the president secretly ordered that its members be given tents, cots, army rations and medical care.In July, the Senate rejected the bonus 62 to 18. Most of the protesters went home, aided by Hoover's offer of free passage on the rails. Ten thousand remained behind, among them a hard core of Communists and other organizers. On the morning of July 28, forty protesters tried to reclaim an evacuated building in downtown Washington scheduled for demolition. The city's police chief, Pellham Glassford, sympathetic to the marchers, was knocked down by a brick. Glassford's assistant suffered a fractured skull. When rushed by a crowd, two other policemen opened fire. Two of the marchers were killed. Source

Bud Fields and his family. Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. Source

Squatter's Camp, Route 70, Arkansas, October, 1935. Photographer: Ben Shahn Source

Philipinos cutting lettuce, Salinas, California, 1935. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. In order to maximize their ability to exploit farm workers, California employers recruited from China, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the American south, and Europe. Source

Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama, 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. Source

Farmer and sons, dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein. The drought that helped cripple agriculture in the Great Depression was the worst in the climatological history of the country. By 1934 it had dessicated the Great Plains, from North Dakota to Texas, from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rockies. Vast dust storms swept the region. Source

Migrant pea pickers camp in the rain. California, February, 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

In one of the largest pea camps in California. February, 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:  I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960). Source

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," destitute in a pea picker's camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute. By the end of the decade there were still 4 million migrants on the road. Source

Freight car converted into house in "Little Oklahoma," California. February, 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange Source

Gellert, Hugo, 1924. Vote Communist poster. During the 1920s the American Communist Party was often a victim at once of government oppression and of its own sectarian struggles, but in the mid-1930s it adopted a "popular front" policy of alliances with liberal organizations. Its membership tripled, but more important still were the thousands of sympathizers who endorsed party-supported causes. Source

Demonstration of unemployed, Columbus, Kansas. May 1936. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein. Source

A sharecropper's yard, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans Source

Porch of a sharecropper's cabin, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. The marginal and oppresive economy of sharecropping largely collapsed during the great Depression. Source

Kitchen in house of Floyd Burroughs, sharecropper, near Moundville, Hale County, Alabama. Summer 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans. Source

Part of an impoverished family of nine on a New Mexico highway. Depression refugees from Iowa. Left Iowa in 1932 because of father's ill health. Father an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade, tubercular. Family has been on relief in Arizona but refused entry on relief roles in Iowa to which state they wish to return. Nine children including a sick four-month-old baby. No money at all. About to sell their belongings and trailer for money to buy food. "We don't want to go where we'll be a nuisance to anybody." Children of migrant workers typically had no way to attend school. By the end of 1930 some 3 million children had abandoned school. Thousands of schools had closed or were operating on reduced hours. At least 200,000 children took to the roads on their own.  Summer 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

People living in miserable poverty, Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. August 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Squatter camp, California, November 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

During the Great Depression, unemployment was high. Many employers tried to get as much work as possible from their employees for the lowest possible wage. Workers were upset with the speedup of assembly lines, working conditions and the lack of job security. Seeking strength in unity, they formed unions. Automobile workers organized the U.A.W. (United Automobile Workers of America) in 1935. General Motors would not recognize the U.A.W. as the workers' bargaining representative. Hearing rumors that G.M. was moving work to factories where the union was not as strong, workers in Flint began a sit-down strike on December 30, 1936. The sit-down was an effective way to strike. When workers walked off the job and picketed a plant, management could bring in new workers to break the strike. If the workers stayed in the plant, management could not replace them with other workers. This photograph shows the broken windows at General Motors' Flint Fisher Body Plant during the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37. Source

Strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Flint, Michigan, Jan.-Feb. 1936. Photographer: Sheldon Dick. Source

Toward Los Angeles, California. 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Perhaps 2.5 million people abandoned their homes in the South and the Great Plains during the Great Depression and went on the road. Source

Waiting for the semimonthly relief checks at Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California. Typical story: fifteen years ago they owned farms in Oklahoma. Lost them through foreclosure when cotton prices fell after the war. Became tenants and sharecroppers. With the drought and dust they came West, 1934-1937. Never before left the county where they were born. Now although in California over a year they haven't been continuously resident in any single county long enough to become a legal resident. Reason: migratory agricultural laborers. March 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Drought refugees near Holtville, California. March 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange Source

Leland, Mississippi, in the Delta area, June 1937. Photographer: Dorothea lange. Source

Lincoln Brigade Ambulance Corps. Group photo in New York of sixteen volunteers, American Medical Bureau. 125 American men and women served in the Spanish Civil War with the American Medical Bureau as nurses, doctors, and support staff. 1936-1939. The Spanish Civil War was the great international cause of the 1930s. Aided by Hitler and Mussolini, the Spansih military led a revolt against the progressive elected government. About 3,000 Americans volunteered to fight on behlaf of the Spanish Republic.  Click here for the MAPS page on the Spanish Civil War Source

Spanish Civil War demonstration in New York. Press photo. Photograph by "Alexander, 177 Thompson Street, New York." Source

Strike pickets, New York, New York. Dec. 1937. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein. Source

Unemployed workers in front of a shack with Christmas tree, East 12th Street, New York City. December 1937. Photographer: Russell Lee. Tattered communities of the homeless coalesced in and around every major city in the country. Source

Part of the daily lineup outside the State Employment Service Office. Memphis, Tennessee. June 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Squatter makes coffee in kitchen at his home in abandoned warehouse, Caruthersville, Missouri. August 1938. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Members of the picket line at King Farm strike. Morrisville, Pennsylvania. August 1938. Photographer: John Vachon. In contrast to a frequently racist society, several unions were militantly integrationist. Source

Power farming displaces tenants. Texas panhandle, 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Source

Squatters in Mexican section in San Antonio, Texas. House was built of scrap material in vacant lot in Mexican section of San Antonio, Texas. March 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Mexican woman arranging things in her shack home. San Antonio, Texas. March 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Relief line waiting for commodities, San Antonio, Texas. March 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Man in hobo jungle killing turtle to make soup, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sept. 1939. Photographer: John Vachon. Source

Selling apples, Jacksonville, Texas. October, 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Many tried apple-selling to avoid the shame of panhandling. In New York City, there were over 5,000 apple sellers on the street. Source

Young boys waiting in kitchen of city mission for soup which is given out nightly. Dubuque, Iowa. April 1940. Photographer: John Vachon. For millions, soup kitchens offered the only food they would eat. Source

Durham, North Carolina, May 1940. Photographer: Jack Delano. "At the bus station." Source

Upstairs bedroom of family on relief, Chicago, Illinois. April 1941. Photographer: Russell Lee. Source

Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. Strikers near the sugar mill. Jan. 1942. Photographer: Jack Delano. Source

Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. In the mill village at the sugar mill. Jan. 1942. Photographer: Jack Delano. Source