Random Economic Data Point du Jour: Traffic Lights and Layoffs

This is apropos of pretty much nothing at all, but for a presentation I was working just now I tried to put in context the current total of 2.5-million U.S. layoffs and job losses.

So … making a host of dubious and supportable assumptions, including the number of traffic lights per capita in a typical city, the number of people/cars at each light, time of day, average family sizes, mobility pre/post unemployment, etc., I come up with the following: If you transit as few as five traffic lights in the average city it is likely that someone in a car at one of those lights around you was just laid off.

Related posts:

1. Random Cutback Data Point du Jour
2. Realtime: Cellular Traffic Data
3. Dumpster Diving in Highway Traffic Data
4. More Bad Patents: Traffic.com Gets Animated Traffic Patent
5. Three Guesses What Drives WashPost Traffic