Rachel C. sent in a video that shows changes in unemployment rates by U.S. county between January 2007 and May 2010, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Here’s a youtube version, but there’s a larger, less distorted version here:

Note that while the other colors all represent a range of 0.9% (say, from 2.0 to 2.9%), purple is a wider interval, from 7.0 to 9.9%, so there’s going to be more variation in unemployment rates in counties colored purple than those that are in the yellow or red range (but presumably less than gray, since that’s anything over 10.0%). Not sure why that particular interval division was used.

Depressing graphic, no?