The following is an excerpt from a USA Today article:

"America's jobs crisis affects all of us — from university Ph.D.s to recent high school graduates. Every month produces additional pink slips for autoworkers, radiologists and computer engineers. In three years, we have lost nearly 3 million private-sector jobs. Manufacturers have slashed payrolls for 43 straight months. We have shed half a million information jobs since December ... , nearly as many as we added the preceding three years. The so-called recovery began more than two [months] ago, but still there are three unemployed workers for every job opening, and thousands have abandoned the workforce."

Now, here's the catch: the article was written in 2004. Our Nation's economy is gigantically complex. Trying to tie its condition to anyone variable or even trying to estimate the influence upon it of one variable is beyond what we can accomplish on this Board.