Unemployment

A typical family in the Great Depression.

      Before the Great Depression, Americans were prosperous and happy with their wealth. They invested in a lot of things and the economy was great. However, when the stock market crashed, the investments  made attacked the people economically. Many Americans, after losing their money inn the bank, lost their jobs and homes.

       In 1932, a magazine wrote that 34 million people belonged to families with no full-time wage earner. This meant that 34 million families had no adult making money. By 1933, over 85,000 businesses had failed and many more were abolished. Also. there were some barely surviving, those that desperately needed fewer employees. Ford Motor Company, employmentdropped from 128,000 employees to 37,000! While they dropped. hundreds of half made auto mobiles piled in the dust.
      Those people who still had jobs that were supposedly higher-wage, made less. Secretaries who made $40 per week, were now settling for $10. One child remembers, "All of a sudden, my father lost his job and we moved in to a double garage."