As the 1920 Depression gave way to the Roaring ‘20s, successive presidential administrations tackled the question of how to accurately collect unemployment data and other labor market statistics. This decadelong effort eventually bore fruit: just as America descended into the Great Depression, the Census Bureau fielded the 1930 census containing a series of new questions about unemployment. That census, and multiple follow-up surveys, showed unemployment had climbed precipitously; by 1932, nearly a quarter of Americans were out of work.

Faced for the first time with this irrefutable picture of American unemployment, the federal government sprang into action. Congress approved President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which promoted economic recovery through $41.7 billion in stimulus and employment programs (equal to nearly $1 trillion today).