Skill and luck always play a big part of all lives.

Higher skilled folks did a lot better in the depression, and were far less likely to lose jobs. A few notable startups like Budd, and everything aviation did well in the 30's, as did the film industry, but mostly after 1933. This was the age when folks first fully learned that a high school or college degree meant a significant degree of job security in the "new" economy of the 1930's.

The fact is that GDP fell 50% form 1929, and unemployment was estimated at 25% by 1933, back when there was for the mot part no unemployment insurance. Auto companies, steel, RR's, and just about everything else faced a near total collapse at the bottom, and those still working were earning far less, due to wage cuts they had no real choice but to accept. Most folks I knew who lived through the depression, even my oil company ancestor's (who did pretty well with "black gold" and college degrees) told me times were hard, even for folks with jobs.

Unfortunately, hard work, didn't seem to have much to do with how the depression might affect most folks. It seems most folks worked pretty hard back then, and yet, when no one bought things like new cars, they got laid off anyhow.

I knew plenty of hard working RR folks who didn't work at all for almost 10 years, or came of age in the 1930's, with no jobs, who joined the CCC, or even bummed the country in boxcars looking for laboring work. I even learned how to make "free" tomato soup from hot water and ketchup from those old switchmen.

Some of these folks who went through hard times in the depression were stoic, happy those days were over, and were so mindful of small acts of kindness that they would still give you the shirt off of their back. Some of those 1920's dates were also some of the bitterest a$$#0les you could ever spend 16 hours with, especially toward us young heads. They had been hardened by a period of real pain and want in their young lives.

As Jerry Ford once observed: "Life is not fair." But, education seems to matter, and maybe gives you a little better edge with calculating just how lucky you might be?