Lots of interesting stuff here...a few that caught my eye (with a Seattle bias):
1. The unemployment rate for men is 8.4%. For married men, it's 4.9%.
7. China's labor force grew by 145 million from 1990 to 2008. The entire U.S. labor force today is 156 million.
9. In 1999, one of the best years for the market ever, more than half of stocks in the S&P 500 declined. Two companies, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) and Cisco, accounted for one-fifth of the index's return.
10. From 1929 to 1932, the total amount of money paid out in wages fell by 60%, according to historian Frederick Lewis Allen. By contrast, from 2007-2009, total American wages fell less than 5%. What we experienced in recent years was nothing close to the Great Depression.
11. A Honda Civic hybrid starts at $24,200 and gets 44 miles per gallon. A Civic with a normal gas engine starts at $16,000 and gets 39 MPG. If you drive 15,000 miles a year and gas averages $4 a gallon, it will take 47 years for the hybrid to justify its cost over the traditional model.
14. At the height of his success, Andrew Carnegie's annual income was 20,000 times the average American's wage, according to historian Frederick Lewis Allen. That's the equivalent of about $720 million in today's economy. In 2010, hedge fund manager John Paulson earned $4.9 billion, or nearly seven times what Carnegie earned in his prime. The key difference: Carnegie made steel to construct buildings. Paulson bought derivatives to bet against them.
20. Boeing (NYSE: BA ) accounts for almost 2% of all U.S. exports.
26. Since December 2007, male employment has fallen 4.7%. Female employment fell just about half that amount, 2.7%
31. PCs outsold Macs by nearly 60-to-1 in 2004. Last year, the ratio was closer to 20-to-1, according to analyst Horace Dediu.
32. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) earned more in net income last quarter than its entire market cap was in 2004.
49. According to UCLA: "Only 3.1 percent of the world's children live in the United States, but U.S. families buy more than 40 percent of the toys consumed globally."
60. Since 1968, the U.S. population has increased from 200 million to 314 million, and federal government employees have declined from 2.9 million to 2.8 million.
62. From 2002 to 2008, 12 congressional incumbents lost in primary elections. During that time, 13 members died in office. So the odds of losing a primary are lower than the odds of dying in office.
69. Americans drove 85 billion fewer miles over the last 12 months than they did in 2008, according to the Department of Transportation.
75. America is home to less than 5% of the world's population, but nearly a quarter of its prisoners.
See the full list here.....http://wtr.mn/PePyzS
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