The St Louis Fed publishes regular updates to the Civilian Unemployment Rate. I thought this chart spanning the ~65 years from post WWII (1945) to today (2010) you can see how recessions have frequently caused large spikes in the unemployment rate.
The spike from the most recent recession is the second highest in the post-war era---That's the bad news. The good news is that during the past few months the Jobless rate went from over 10% to 9.7%... Maybe things are starting to improve.
