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The Unemployed is a project by Jody Zellen.

unemployment.world is a data visualization that illustrates worldwide unemployment. Using data culled from online sources that list unemployment rates by country, The Unemployed represents the jobless as animated wandering figures. The number of unemployed varies from country to country, ranging from a few thousand in sparsely populated places to many millions. These figures move within the confines of their countries borders. The clusters of figures metaphorically become an available labor force, as well as the visible presence of the jobless.

Since Covid-19, the numbers have spiked. Visit the statistics page to compare statistics from May 2019 to June 2020 where available.

The Unemployed was originally created for the iOS app Urban Rhythms with code developed by Jeremy Rotsztain.

It was later reprogrammed for the installation The Unemployed on view in Terminal 6, Departures Level at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) from, May - October 2019.

Sherie Bradfute finalized the code for the iOS app The Unemployed which is available for free from the App Store.

Gary Friedlander helped with the code for this current web-based interation.