(Calculated Risk.)

Children aiming sticks as guns, lined up against a brick building. Washington, D.C.(?), between 1941 and 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photographer Unknown. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The Denver Post showcases an excellent series of photographs under the title “Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943.”

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.

A photograph taken after a protest in Grand Rapids, Mich. (Flickr user StevendePolo)

The Washington Independent has an article worth noting titled “Death and Joblessness: Suicide Dogs the Long-Term Unemployed. What Can Be Done to Help Them?” Here is an excerpt:

The unemployed commit suicide at a rate two or three times the national average, researchers estimate. And in many cases, the longer the spell of unemployment, the higher the likelihood of suicide.

On online fora such as Unemployed-Friends, the topic comes up often, users finding news reports or hearing tell of deaths in their community, and mourning them. There was the Staten Island suicide, where an emergency medical services employee who thought himself about to be fired posted his final words on Facebook: “I can’t go on anymore. I just hung myself.” In Anaheim, Calif., there was the man underwater on his mortgage and awash in credit card debt who shot his wife and and one of his children before himself. His two children survived. His wife did not. In Indiana, there was the middle-aged mother who sent her daughter out to buy soda and killed herself before her daughter came back. That happened the day after the repossession of her Chevy Malibu.

The NYT has an article by Stephanie Rosenbloom titled “But Will It Make You Happy?” Here is an excerpt:

According to retailers and analysts, consumers have gravitated more toward experiences than possessions over the last couple of years, opting to use their extra cash for nights at home with family, watching movies and playing games — or for “staycations” in the backyard. Many retailing professionals think this is not a fad, but rather “the new normal.”

The chart above is from Calculated Risk. Here is the summary:

The underlying details of the employment report were mixed. The positives: a slight increase in hours worked and in hourly wages, and the slight decreases in part time workers (for economic reasons) and in the long term unemployed.

The negatives include the weak hiring of only 12,000 ex-Census, the declines in the participation rate and employment-population rate, and the significant downward revision to the June employment report.

Overall this was a weak report.

RealtyTrac has a post titled “1.65 Million Properties Receive Foreclosure Filings in First Half of 2010.” Here is an excerpt:

Foreclosure filings were reported on 895,521 U.S. properties during the second quarter, a decrease of nearly 4 percent from the previous quarter and an increase of less than 1 percent from the second quarter of 2009. Default and auction notices were down on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis in the second quarter, but bank repossessions (REOs) increased 5 percent from the previous quarter and 38 percent from Q2 2009 to 269,962 — a new quarterly high for the report.

“The second quarter was a tale of two trends,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “The pace of properties entering foreclosure slowed as lenders pre-empted or delayed foreclosure proceedings on delinquent properties with more aggressive short sale and loan modification initiatives. Meanwhile the pace of properties completing the foreclosure process through bank repossession quickened as lenders cleared out a backlog of distressed inventory delayed by foreclosure prevention efforts in 2009.

“The midyear numbers put us on pace to exceed 3 million properties with foreclosure filings by the end of the year, and more than 1 million bank repossessions,” Saccacio continued. “The roller coaster pattern of foreclosure activity over the past 12 months demonstrates that while the foreclosure problem is being managed on the surface, a massive number of distressed properties and underwater loans continues to sit just below the surface, threatening the fragile stability of the housing market.”

(Find the photo above by Andrew Ciscel in the Jacques Vallee post at boingboing titled “Stating the Obvious: If you don’t have a house you don’t need no sofa.”)

Catherine Rampell has the chart above in her post “Longer Unemployment Equals Worse Re-employment.” Here is an excerpt:

Compared to people out of work for only a short while, people who have been unemployed for long periods of time are more likely to say that the new job they eventually find is worse than their old one.

That is one of the findings of a new report from the Pew Research Center. The report is based on a survey conducted from May 11-31, with 810 adults who are or had been unemployed at some point during the recession.

(Checkout Economic Insecurity Index and read the Mother Jones article by Kevin Drum titled “How the Economy is Affecting Us.”)

Felix Salmon has a post with this concerning chart. Here is an excerpt from it:

The dynamics here are terrible, of course, because there are five unemployed people for every job opening. In that kind of context the only way that this chart is going to start reverting to the mean is if millions of Americans simply give up looking for work at all, and therefore stop counting as unemployed for the purposes of these statistics. The ranks of the demoralized are growing fast — but, clearly, not enough to stop the median period of unemployment rising inexorably past the 6-month mark.