How the Depression Affected Children 1 of 3 What was it like growing up during the Great Depression? For many people, life was a daily struggle. At the peak of the Depression, 25% of the nation's workers -- one out of four -- were unemployed. No job meant no money to pay the mortgage or buy food and clothes for the family. Times were hard whether you lived in a city or on a farm, whether you were an adult or a child. Families unable to pay the mortgage lost their homes and farms. As a result, about 250,000 young people were homeless in the early years of the Depression. Many became nomads, traveling the highways and railways.