The highest annual rate of unemployment in the 1920s was 12 percent in one year, while unemployment in the 1930s peaked at 25 percent, and was at or above 20 percent for 35 consecutive months.66 Then, after subsiding somewhat—but still continuously in double digits for years—unemployment rose again to 20 percent or above during six months in 1935, four months in 1938 and one month in the spring of 1939, almost a decade after the stock market crash of 1929 that supposedly caused the high unemployment of the 1930s. In short, unemployment was at or above 20 percent for 46 months—the equivalent of
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