We’ve all heard the numbers. The larger than life numbers. There is a deeply rooted sense of fear, too; maybe I’m next.

Oregon’s unemployment is now over nine percent, and industries everywhere are closing shop or forcing employees to take drastic cuts.

Recently, unemployment was just something an occasional friend, or maybe you yourself had to go through for a brief amount of time. It was mostly hidden from society. Now it’s everywhere, and getting worse.

Today, on WiredOregon.com, we posted the following video interview. It’s a story of a woman who has gone without a job since November, and despite efforts to gain employment, nothing is available.

Sadly, I think we’re only at the beginning. This is going to get far worse before it gets better — and I’m sure “better” does not mean “like it was.”

Far smarter people than I have written about how a nation can not continually buy on credit, so if you want to read more on that, I suggest you use Google, or pick up a public policy publication; and I’m not going to sit here and blame the Republicans or the Democrats, this is much bigger and far more complex than that.

A reading of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat gives an overview of just how complex the world economy now is. For too long the United States has hogged more than it’s share of the economic pie. As more nations with educated, large populations come online, they take some of the pie.

Naturally, this causes many to join movements of protectionism and anti-globalization. That’s not the answer.

The Detroit auto workers went down this road. The unions blamed cheap labor in third-world countries, instead of giving into one of the cornerstones of capitalism, that of comparative advantage. Where Government should have taken resources to re-train and re-equip an entire industry 20 years ago, we instead, as Americans decided to blame “them” making them “the other,” “the lesser.”

Now, we as a state and a nation face seeing many more of our own become poor, jobless and too many homeless.

To lose your job or your home is to lose your identity. It is viewed as such a failure of a persons ability to provide for themselves and others, that many never recover; and sadly, it seems that our government isn’t listening.

Here is Melissa’s story, one which is sadly becoming “The American Story.”