Geez...That Sucks

By Alicia Dorr in News on Feb 14, 2007 8:03PM

We know that it's not easy to find a job, depending on the availability, your skill set and your hygeine, but what if you just lost one? What becomes of those broken-hearted?

We only bring this up because 14,916 workers in the greater Chicago area (including Northwest Indiana) were laid off in late 2006 — the highest number of mass layoffs in the nation for the last three months of 2006. Most of these hungry mouths back on the streets were the human casualty of 91 mass layoffs in the fourth quarter. The worst part about this figure is that it is actually an 8 percent improvement from the year before, keeping our less than popular rank of 2nd in the nation (L.A.-Long Beach-Santa Ana take the cake).

The dismal details are painstakingly recorded on the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics page, under its own little depressing "Mass Layoffs" section (yes, there's an actual section).

Whether you want to argue that the economy is improving or that we can't serve each other hamburgers forever, you're going to have to take into account the fact that "mass layoff" means the jobs aren't coming back. The heyday of industry in hubs like Chicago is obviously over, leaving a huge workforce that doesn't have the first clue on where to start looking for something even close to what they had before. Not to be Debbie Downer (or Sara Lee) or anything, but this just effing sucks.

Image via Socialistworld.net.