i guess i should stop complaining about my pay cut now

At least I’m lucky enough to still have my Oregon job:

Oregon’s jobless rate has taken a dramatic jump, to 12.1 percent in March — a rate seen only once before since the years after World War II.

The increase could put Oregon on a pace to have the highest unemployment rate in the nation when those figures are released on Friday, state labor economist Art Ayre said today.

Michigan currently has the highest rate, at 12 percent. Oregon’s comparable figure from February, 10.7 percent, put it tied for third.

The state Employment Department said the March jobless figure in Oregon matches that of November 1982, which was the high point of the recession of the early 1980s.

The department said today that the statistics aren’t exactly comparable, but it appears that 12.1 percent is the highest unemployment rate the state has recorded since the department first began publishing the statistics in 1947.

The state’s jobless rate has risen for 14 months in a row. The increases averaged a percentage point per month over the last five months.

Ayre cited large job losses in three major sectors: construction, manufacturing and trade, transportation and utilities.

Our company is in trade and transportation. I can only hope Ayres is right when he says the recession hit here early and fast, and that the job loss should slow down. But with so many people recently out of work and holding tight to what money they have, consumption – and employment – is sure to fall further.

There’s a big tea-baggers party planned for tomorrow in downtown Portland. I wonder how many of those knee-jerk, anti-tax, capitalism-über-alles morons know that $60 million in unemployment benefits are going out of the state’s coffers each week, and without that government spending (including the help provided by Obama’s reviled stimulus package) this state, and all of the jobs left in it, would grind to a halt.