Please help:

I'm a writer, and I decided to finish this story that came to me. The setting is Rochester, New York, and later on a town (haven't decided which town) in Washington. The anno is 1931, which is during the Great Depression. The Depression has a lot of impact on the events in my story, so....if anyone out there knows a lot of facts about the Depression, can te please answer these domande for me;

1. How did it impact people's jobs?
2. From a scale of 1 to 10, what was the severity of the Depression?
3. How did it affect New York and Washington?

Just those three questions, o anything else te would like to add :)