[Vision2020] Stress Map Breaks Down the Recession

[bear at moscow.com]

Tom,

This can't suprise you when we have the same issues right here in Moscow!

Remember, I'm one of the people that were told by the University when I
applied for a position there that while we won't hold it against you that
you are a veteran, we will not follow the state laws that give you a
veterans preference when you apply for a state job with us!

Hang a yellow ribbon on that one!


Wayne


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> Courtesy of today's (May 18, 2009) Spokesman Review.
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> Through the voices of its people, the map shouts.
>
>>From Atlanta, Ga., listen to Marian Chamberlain — 65, jobless, and no
> longer eligible for unemployment: “I will never be able to retire.”
>
>>From Shakopee, Minn., listen to Bruce Paul, 56, a vintage car mechanic
> laid off in January and unemployed for the first time since Richard Nixon
> was president. Today he and his wife spend their days in the public
> library to reduce energy costs at home. “You go out and they say, you
> know, you need a resume. And I say, `A resume? What’s that?”’
>
>>From Broomfield, Colo., listen to U.S. Marine and construction worker
> Simon Todt, 27, a combat-arms specialist who returned from three tours in
> Iraq only to be laid off from his construction job in December. He smiles
> wanly as he sums up his situation: “There’s not a big calling in the
> civilian world for explosives.”
>
> The republic is brimming with Americans like these. And the Associated
> Press Economic Stress Map helps us find their voices and tell their
> stories.
>
> For generations, maps have told tales that words and numbers alone cannot.
> Maps guided us to the New World, helped us navigate from its edges into
> its interior. Vague, undefined maps showed Lewis & Clark where to go next
> — and in turn gave us fresher, more accurate maps that fueled further
> explorations. Maps outlined the frontier for settlement and showed us
> where to find the silver, the gold and the coal that made us prosperous.
> Computer mapping helps businesses expand, prosper and find new customers.
>
> The interactive Stress Map offers insight into the American recession,
> translating it into misery and geography using an equation, the Stress
> Index, that shows us — state by state, county by county — just how
> uncertain and battered around we actually are. It takes the numbers, the
> pronouncements, the big plans for recovery and illustrates what they mean
> on Main Street USA, or what passes for it in 21st-century American
> communities.
>
> The Stress Index synthesizes three complex sets of ever-evolving data. By
> factoring in monthly numbers for foreclosure, bankruptcy and — most
> painfully — unemployment, the AP has assembled a numeral that reflects the
> comparative pain each American county is feeling during these dark
> economic days.
>
> Here are some fleeting examples of what the Stress Index tells us:
>
> •The current recession spread like an epidemic from isolation to ubiquity,
> marching from sequestered pockets of foreclosure to a nationwide explosion
> of misery as unemployment overtook foreclosures as the dominant misfortune
> of this recession.
>
> •Places with technology-based economies were recession-proof for a while
> but aren’t now.
>
> •Places with large numbers of government jobs — state capitals, university
> towns, communities with concentrations of hospitals — remain fairly
> recession-proof. These are places like Columbia, Mo.; Madison, Wis.; the
> Raleigh, N.C., area; and Athens, Ga.
>
> •State government is not hurting that much — at least, not yet.
>
> •The regions we look to for our traditional sources of energy, for our
> coal and oil — Wyoming, West Virginia and the like — have generally not
> been hit as hard.
>
> •While bankruptcy declarations are happening everywhere, they tend to be
> higher in the South because of such things as low wages, state laws that
> give power to creditors and a culture that’s more familiar with the
> bankruptcy option.
>
> •Among counties with 25,000-plus residents, no place has been hit harder
> than Elkhart County, Ind., and that 15 of the 20 American counties hit
> hardest by the recession in the past year are in six states — Indiana,
> Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
>
> The Stress Index is not merely a map of misery, though. When recovery
> comes, it can be a map of optimism as well, a welcome harbinger of better
> days approaching. Going forward, it can track the recovery we hunger for —
> show us where it is poking its head up, where it is spreading and who it
> is leaving behind.
>
> The map, and the numbers behind it, cannot tell us everything. No single
> number can track Americans’ net worth, no monthly barometer indicates the
> pain factor of people who lost retirement funds, whose stocks vanished out
> from under them, who dutifully set aside nest eggs that now amount to
> little or nothing.
>
> But it can help compare and contrast places, then find the people who
> breathe life into the numbers that characterize their regions and their
> hometowns. It can illustrate emerging trends — why are certain areas
> starting to recover while others are lagging behind? — and offer early
> hints to where the tightness of economic stress might be starting to
> loosen.
>
> Where can we go with this map? It can carry us to Los Gatos, Calif., one
> of the high-tech regions that seemed to be escaping the worst of the
> recession but is now clawing to keep pace. It can point us toward
> Champaign, Ill., an example of the trend that communities with government
> institutions tend to be more recession-proof than other places.
>
> It can highlight Burlington, N.C., where the manufacturing jobs that
> disappeared might never be coming back, and Myrtle Beach, S.C., where
> unemployment and foreclosures have locals wondering when the dividends of
> the American vacation economy will shine upon them once more.
>
> There was a time, not so long ago, when the problem was that we didn’t
> have enough information. Now, you can argue, we have too much — dizzyingly
> so. And instead of being tasked with accumulating enough data to
> understand our world, now we spend our jumbled days shuffling through the
> information that’s out there, struggling to make sense of it and harness
> it to improve our lives.
>
> For the immediate future, the AP Economic Stress Map will attempt to do
> just that for the United States. AP reporters will be fanning out across
> the land, telling regular stories based on the monthly numbers — stories
> of people like Ron Edo, 42, an aircraft maintenance worker from Temecula,
> Calif., who has sent out more than 1,500 resumes since he lost his job a
> year ago.
>
> “Luckily I saved when I was young,” he says. “My parents used to always
> tell me to save for a rainy day. And it’s pouring.”
>
> There are many more like him. The map shouts — and in doing so, points us
> to the stories of the most wrenching economic conundrum of our age.
>
> ---------
>
> The Stress Map
>
> Search the color-coded interactive map that allows users to see the Stress
> Index in counties across America, along with foreclosure, unemployment and
> bankruptcy rates.
>
> http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/stress_index/
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> "The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
> and the Realist adjusts his sails."
>
> - Unknown
>
>
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