BackStory

The following links and documents relate to the BackStory episode “Looking for Work: A History of Unemployment”, originally broadcast in September of 2010. You can listen to the entire episode here.

All Centuries

• The origins of the government definition of “unemployment”
• Stories and resources about the history of African-American migration for work
• Bureau of Labor Statistics overview of unemployment

18th Century

• Letter from a German laborer in Pennsylvania about the “miserable and wretched” conditions for migrants to the U.S. (1750)
• Letter from a Scottish indentured servant in Virginia (1774)
  

19th Century

• Newspaper ad for the “Tramp’s Terror” (1877)
• Testimony by a Massachusetts mill worker about making ends meet when work dries up (1883)
• Harper’s article on Seattle’s anti-Chinese riots during the depression of the mid-1880s (1886)

20th Century & Beyond

• Letters from African-Americans looking for work in the North. (1917)
• Works Progress Administration film touting the benefits of the New Deal for African Americans (1937)
• Tape of President Nixon and an aide discussing how to handle the rising unemployment rate (1971)
• Racial disparities in unemployment, state by state
• Why joblessness now is bleaker than it’s been in past downturns
• The invisibility of the “underemployed” in America
• Compare official unemployment rates since 1948