Hhhhmmm. Another way to look at unemployment

The good people at dailyyonder.com (Thanks to Pamela Price for the suggestion) take a focused look at what’s happening in rural America. In a recent post they took a look at rural unemployment and they put together a stat-map. I love spacial statistical rendering. Here it is, taken directly from their site.

This map looks very much like the concentration of Latino voters map posted by Sara Ines Calderon. No surprise; Latinos are concentrated in the South West. That’s why I found the rural unemployment map interesting. While the job picture is looking up in parts of rural America, it’s getting worse in the SW, the rural South West, where a huge chunk of gente live and try to eek out a living.

What’s going on? Ideas you can share? And how does this correlate to the voter concentration map? What does it say about rural politics?

I’d love for anyone with pertinent information to chime in!