[fogarty]

Believe me, you speak for more than just Boston. Dallas is in a hurt locker. For the Richardson-Plano corridor, it's like a neutron bomb went off. Several hundred thousands layoffs during the past two years, and incredibly, the layoffs are continuing. I have a friend who fortunately found a job here on the Fort Worth side, and he finally sold his home over there (after 8 months on the market, and at a loss of $20k).

One thing Texas has going for it is Defense contractors, but they are maybe putting back 10% the jobs the telecoms and tech companies are getting rid of.

7% unemployment nationwide may not be far off.

[VOA]

Believe me, you speak for more than just Boston. Dallas is in a hurt locker.

I have a cousin that does (profitably, amazingly) webwork in Dallas.
He's had two friends that lost their telecomm jobs in Dallas during the blood-letting
of the past two years.
Interestingly, both of them eventually found telecomm/engineering work...in Boston.
(One had worked for Nortel in France and in Dallas; the other had jumped between
so many telecomms in Dallas, I lost track of which ones he'd been with.)

[Mini-14]

I was laid off in Richardson twice in one year. Now I am in Illinois. With regard to your estimate of 100s of thousands, I though it was only 10s of thousands. What is your source of information?

BTW, I have a friend in Plano who got a job last week as a programmer. He had been out of work for 11 months, and is having to start over financially from scratch. He is in his 50s.