Graph from Nature Human Behavior showing the rise of Active Shooters with the rise in unemployment.

We all can understand how the stress and trauma of unemployment adversely affect a family. When bills are unpaid, rents are overdue and the source of the family’s next meal is uncertain, anxiety can overwhelm anyone’s ability to cope. With over 30 million people unemployed, learning what to do in an active shooter event makes sense.

The authors of “Nature Human Behavior” at nature.com found a significant relationship between the number of shooting incidents per month and the unemployment rate. Increasing unemployment was strongly associated with decreasing time between shooting events. The authors also looked at the relationship in reverse and checked to see if times with higher shooting rates also had higher rates of unemployment. They found that months with two or more shooting events had larger mean-normalized unemployment rates.