When in reality, those statistics have been cooked. Those numbers don't include people who have given up looking, the underemployed, part-time workers, or even suicides.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is part of the problem. Their measurements are deceptive.
At any rate, all the actual data linked in this thread points to the view that unemployment is not at its peak since the great depression. Unless you post something credible to refute that, I'm going to assume that I was right about this point and that your hypothesis is unsupported.
Sadly I blame the UAW, for then and for what's happened to Detroit since, but it still happened. It was grim. Sadly, a UAW like solution solves some problems but creates some bigger ones including just killing off the whole industry it tried to 'organize'.