State of the U.S. economy the year you were born
2 min read
Photo: Henry Han // Wikimedia Commons. Article by Betsy Ladyzhets.
State of the U.S. economy during the year you were born
The United States in the past century has gone from a developing industrialized nation to a global economic powerhouse. This country survived two major recessions (and several minor ones), weathered numerous wars, evolved its manufacturing and service industries, and developed a groundbreaking tech sector. But growth is rarely a straight line, as indicated by the state of the U.S. economy year-over-year. We have lived through dips and pitfalls, steady climbs and leaps. Today, we’ve reached a new precipice punctuated by a global pandemic, record-breaking $2 trillion stimulus package, and the tenuous stock market. With all of that unfolding in real-time, Stacker set out to trace the major events that define the economic legacy of the century.
We combined economic data and history to take a hard look at the country’s changing economy through the years. In each slide, you can find six metrics describing the economy from that year including the Consumer Price Index (CPI: the weighted average price of a bundle of goods and services that can be used to track inflation), the Gross Domestic Product (GDP: combined monetary value of all goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a given year), the nation’s federal debt, unemployment rate, and average or median household income of U.S. households. All data has been adjusted for inflation using the 2019 CPI. […]