We tend to think of the depression as one long event that lasted from October 1929 until Dec. 7, 1941. A picture is emerging for me from the newspapers of the time and from the fireside chat that Americans of the time saw things differently. There are references to new recessions and improvements. I should start looking for unemployment figures in the papers as we move along. My rusty understanding is that unemployment remained unwaveringly high right until our entry into the war and the New Deal programs were more feel-good than objectively productive.
In his chat he was going on about how we are overproducing and under consuming....in 1938. Lets look at the National Industrial Recovery act of 1933. (A New Deal policy)
The NIRA was formed to stabilize declining prices for industry. The declining prices were due to excess surplus of course. While they did stabilize prices at first, they also set a MINIMUM WAGE.
With the increased wages came an increase in prices and it hit a threshold where the consumer stopped buying. The the cycle of too much production and not enough consumption continued....for him to bemoan it 5 years later in his Fireside Chat.