Useful facts and figures about the United States.

Economy
The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world. The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a ‘two-tier labour market’ in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and fail to get comparable pay raises, health insurance coverage and other benefits.
Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups.
The global economic downturn, the subprime mortgage crisis, investment bank failures, falling home prices, and tight credit pushed the US into a recession by mid-2008. GDP contracted until the third quarter of 2009, making this the deepest and longest downturn since the Great Depression.
In July 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a bill designed to promote financial stability by protecting consumers from financial abuses, ending taxpayer bailouts of financial firms, dealing with troubled banks that are ‘too big to fail’ and improving accountability and transparency in the financial system.

Location: North America, bordering both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific, between Canada and Mexico
Area: 9,826,675 sq km in total
Currency: dollar
GDP (purchasing power parity): $46,400 (2009 est)
Language: English 82.1%, Spanish 10.7%, other Indo-European 3.8%, Asian and Pacific island 2.7%, other 0.7% (2000 census); Hawaiian is an official language in the state of Hawaii
Population: 310,232,863 (2010 est)
Population growth: 0.97% (2010 est)
Literacy (age 15 and over can read and write): 99% of the total population
Net migration rate: 4.25 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2010 est)
Nationality: noun: American(s);  adjective: American
Land use: Arable land: 18.01%; permanent crops: 0.21%; other: 81.78% (2005 est)
Natural hazards: tsunamis; volcanoes; earthquake activity around Pacific Basin; hurricanes along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts; tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast; mudslides in California; forest fires in the West; flooding; permafrost in northern Alaska
Ethnic groups: white: 79.96%; black: 12.85%; Asian: 4.43%; Amerindian and Alaska native: 0.97%; native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander: 0.18%; two or more races: 1.61% (2007 est)
Religions: Protestant: 51.3%; Roman Catholic: 23.9%; Mormon: 1.7%; other Christian: 1.6%; Jewish: 1.7%; Buddhist: 0.7%; Muslim: 0.6%; other or unspecified 2.5%; unaffiliated 12.1%; none 4% (2007 est)
International country code: 1
Internet country code: .us