On the recordFebruary 2, 2010
I rise to speak about job loss in the United States but in particular some of the individuals--the real people and real families--across our State whom I have met in the last couple weeks and who have told some of their stories about how they are struggling in this recession. Unfortunately, just in terms of numbers, they have not gotten better in our State. We went a long period of time, when at least as a percentage of those who were out of work, we were fortunately in the bottom tier or in the middle. At least we didn't have double-digit unemployment. That is changing, to a large extent. We are not in the 10 percent number that most of the country is, but we are at about 8.9 percent right now. We got some regional numbers today. Our State is divided into 14 labor markets and, unfortunately, in almost every one of them, that number keeps going up.
