The Recession in Purty Colors

The New York Times has put together a fascinating map of the nation that plots joblessness rates on a county-by-county basis. You can filter the map to see only, for example, counties that are manufacturing centers, or counties that experienced a housing bubble.

While a lot of the high unemployment rates are focused on notably hard-hit places like Michigan and Southern California, some of the other jobless spikes are in surprising places.