Health Care, Recession, Terrorism, Unemployment - Google Trends

As 2010 begins, two issues occupy the limelight in the nation's public discourse. I did a 6-month comparison of Google search volume of the terms "health care" and "recession" in the United States.  The blue line corresponds to volume of searches for "health care"; the red line, "recession".  Here are the results:

One might conclude that Americans are thinking or worrying more about health care than they are the "recession" economy, especially in the last half of 2009. Let's throw in another term, "terrorism" just for comparison. Again, blue="health care", red="recession"; orange="terrorism".

Again, "health care" is generating more search traffic. "Terrorism" is down there with "recession". Lets see how "unemployment" (green line, below) measures up to these three:

In this comparison, "unemployment" generated the most search traffic, and was consistently high for the entire 6-month period. Roughly 10% of American workers are unemployed. Roughly 10% of Americans have no health care. These two issues are the more immediate worries to families and individuals - while "terrorism" and "recession" appear to be background issues.