Nevada is a right to work state with fairly weak union ties.

Amen Sue. In addition, the company will tell the union they have "X" dollars for salaries and the union would rather have 35,000 jobs at $35 and hour than 40,000 jobs at say $30 an hour. Then they tell the workers its the company that wanted to elimintate 5,000 jobs, while the average worker would want to keep them all working. Many times those lower seniority workers are the kids of the same senior workers in the same job.

If the union workers could keep the 300 million that the boss thugs give to Obama and the Democrats hey would not need big raises.

Yowsaaaaa....Riddle me this Foxfreaks Sue and Big ol Ray: So you be sayin that the Big Bad Unions and their Bosses who represent UNDER 12% of the private workforce in the country are responsible Right? And of course since the gubment has laid of over 500,000 workers, then it's the gubment AND the big bad Unions that caused the problems? Right?............Clear thinking conservopusses! I got it now...I,m gonna vote republican!!!!!!!

Torpedo, yes you have it right the Unions are holding back/hindering this country. With a cost to educate a pupil here in the US at well over $10k a year the Union Teachers and their constant demands for more and more continue to burden the already overburdened taxpayers. My property tax bill alone has increased each and every year over the past 4 years while this economy has tanked and average household incomes have dropped, why because of the Union contract demands put in place and agreed upon buy many democrats to reward for votes. Union teachers are just one example, we saw what they did with the Steel industry, the auto industry and so on and so on. Unions do nothing for the 85% of the folks in this country not in them, except increase the cost of each and every single product, service and tax we purchase or pay for, it really is that simple now and no more of what they did long, long ago.

UAW: Much of what you say makes no sense at all. First, your taxes are being increased due to an eroding tax base as property values deteriorate, unemployment causes people to move, unemployment causes less people to pay the taxes that support the government and services.

Second, I doubt that any teachers in your area are being wildly overpaid. Most teachers earn a lot less than median income. They are also getting less in supplies and are dealing with larger class rooms. All the while, the curriculum is getting more complex and difficult to teach.

I am not a teacher, but having 5 kids between the age of 22 and 29, I got to see teachers do a magnificent job teaching them. I also know that none of the teachers were getting rich at their profession. I simply do not understand the lack of respect for educators and education that seems to be raising its ugly head in this country today. At this time we are paying very little for the education our kids receive. It is expensive to teach our population, but it is a worthwhile investment in our future.

Back to the article, I notice that the areas described have always been volatile employment spots--tourism, gambling, rust-belt industries--that get hit first and hardest and come back much later. The cities described do not surprise me at all.

Unions are not perfect because they are made up of imperfect people, as we all are. But the anti-union garbage that I hear people spewing is plain silly, and I would dare say, downright dangerous. Know your history.

Velma I think you and I are the only ones on this page who have read newspapers and books. A lot of these posters are nothing more than FOX viewers who rarely get the truth and wind up watching the world go by blaming unions, union bosses, Harry Reid, and anyone who does read and is not lead along by the nose like these folks are.

Things started falling apart during the last 2 years of the Bush administration and continued into the Obama administration, and lets not forget who controlled both houses of congress during that period. We kicked the Republicans out of congress in 2006 and replaced them with an even worse set of thieves.

Steve 2 wars were started on the credit card, we gave away drugs on medicare on the credit card or withouit having it paid for, and we allowed the SEC to do nothing while wall street made billions on subprime mortgage securities that no one understood any more especially the SEC and the rating agencies. To stay things were falling apart the last 2 years of the Bush administration is not being very well informed and if I'm not mistaken your Replidummies were in charge. and blew through 4 straight years of surpluses under Clinton. Then Bush gave it all away instead of paying back the deficits with the Bush tax cuts that never lived up to what they were supposed to do.

These areas mentioned in the article are in areas with not a very divergent economic base.

Look at New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle--within their metropolitan areas is a huge, very diverse economic base that results in these cities being a lot less prone to recessions. Indeed, the San Francisco metro area has hugely benefited from the success of both the tech industry (e.g., Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, and so on) and the biotech industry.

Yes, things could be better, but its that very diversity that will be the engine of a real economic recovery over the next few years.

Ray, you are correct. N. NV where both Reno and Carson are is redder then red, Obama barely squeaked through in '08 and I doubt he will repeat in '12. So this has nothing to do with knee-jerk Democrat/Unions ruining this part of the state. Let me explain what happened here in the first half of the last decade. Many, many Californians moved here and to avoid capital gains tax bought multiple homes in counties like Lyon (just east of Carson), as the bubble grew these homes gained more and more equity and were being flipped, in turn many more people moved here in order to make a quick buck which caused unsustainable growth. Lyon county has no real industry and for a time the only industry they had was construction as the bubble grew and grew. Lyon county was the bedroom community for Carson workers. Reno suffered from the same thing as well as seeing its main industry (gambling) siphoned by competing casinos with the rise of reservation casinos in CA. So many of these jobs in this study will never come back because they were construction jobs. Unfortunately many of us bought during the bubble because we were afraid we'd never be able to afford anything decent as builders were raising their prices as fast as $30,000/month in some cases. So once the bubble burst all of a sudden we had a huge influx of construction workers that needed to either move or learn new skills. Unfortunately many of them are stuck as part of the benefits of their jobs allowed them to purchase a home at a lower price, but still not as low as the houses are going for now, so they are stuck. Really the only thing that will be able to save this part of the state is an entirely new industry coming in and providing massive employment, which I don't see happening.

Democrat strongholds

Lets call them Demasquats as they number 2 on the 99%