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This map follows an economically turbulent 15-year period in the United States through the lens of the unemployment rate calculated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. At a high level, the data illustrate the recession of the early 2000s, the prosperity—or the facade of it—of the mid-2000s, and the utter turmoil of the Great Recession. But there are stories to be found at other scales, like the relative stability of low unemployment in the Northern Plains, and the stubbornly difficult economic conditions of places like Alaska, California's Central Valley, and parts of the Deep South.
Unemployment data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
State and county boundaries from the US Census Bureau's Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles