When Work Disappears

"The angst over lost manufacturing jobs is shared by rural communities across the United States. Many of the very towns that benefited from a rebound in manufacturing during the 1990s that helped them net thousands of new jobs, have now shuddered through three years of wrenching layoffs and plant closures. Of the 2.7 million jobs the U.S. economy has lost since early 2001, 2.4 million were in manufacturing. The downturn has been particularly tough on some rural communities, which have lost a significantly larger share of manufacturing jobs than urban areas, often because of outright factory shutdowns rather than partial layoffs. Many of the people who've lost jobs in shuttered factories have flocked to the area's high school equivalency programs and technical colleges, seeking retraining."

Thanks to Connie Chung