The Miserable Unemployment of MichiCaliFlAriVada

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MichiCaliFlAriVada, people. You don't want to live there. Because while the recession has been bad for the United States of America, it's been especially terrible for the united states of Michigan, California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. In just about every economic category of pain -- home depreciation, credit card debt, unemployment and so on -- those five states, or a handful of them, cluster at the top. Unemployment numbers by state are out again today. Michigan, Nevada and California are three of the top four.



Here are the unemployment and foreclosure maps of the states. See the interactive versions here at CNN.

unemploymentstateaugust.png foreclosurestateaugust.png Florida leads in foreclosures, with the Cali-AriVada corner on its heals. Michigan leads in unemployment with Cali-Vada in the top four. The recession within a recession in these states is very real, and there is no coincidence. State economies that rode the housing bubble have faced the most dramatic fall after the burst.

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Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for TheAtlantic.com. More

Thompson has written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has also appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC.

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