"Instead of going out for extravagant dinners like we used to, we're having dinner parties where everyone pitches in $10," she said. "You don't normally charge your friends for dinner but we still all want to hang out. And you can't spend $200 to have a dinner party anymore."
President Obama, visiting Columbus, Ohio, on Friday to promote his stimulus package, called the pace of job losses "astounding" but urged people to give the planned outpouring of federal spending a chance to work through the economy.
"This recovery plan won't turn our economy around or solve every problem," Obama said. "All of this takes time, and it will take patience."
The stimulus package is expected to take six to eight months to begin to have a significant effect.
Most economists still predict that the decline in overall economic activity will slow and then bottom out in the coming months. But many warn that the recovery that follows will be an unusually long process.
The sliding stock market isn't helping matters. Although it stabilized Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average this week tumbled 435 points, or 4.2%, on continuing fears about the financial system and the overall economy. Also pushing down share prices were renewed worries that General Motors Corp. could be headed for bankruptcy.
The broad Standard & Poor's 500 stock index lost 7% this week.
In this recession, layoffs have hit blue-collar and white-collar workers alike, all regions of the country, rural areas and urban areas, and every sector of the economy except health, education and government.
Some earlier downturns, however, spread the pain more unevenly.
The recession of the early 1980s, for example, was concentrated among manufacturing workers and in the Great Lakes "Rust Belt," while the contraction of the early 1990s hit hardest at white-collar workers and the two coasts.
In other recent recessions, "there was a sense you could move somewhere else to get out of it," said Swonk, the economist. "What's unique about this recession is how regionally dispersed it is and how it crosses sectors."
Moreover, she said, the shock of job losses is greater now because companies are moving swiftly to dismiss employees rather than taking months to act after a layoff announcement. And severance packages are less generous than in decades past.
The unexpected breadth and depth of the job losses are reflected in the experience of Kelley Moore, 43, who took an administrative job at Tellabs Inc., a communications equipment firm in Naperville, Ill.
"I knew they were going through downsizing," she said Friday. "I asked everyone I interviewed with" whether her position might be a target for elimination. "They said, 'No. No. They can't live without it.' Well guess what? They're living without it."
Moore has been looking for work since January, with discouraging results.
"I've never experienced sending out so many resumes and not hearing anything back," she said.
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mdorning@tribune.com
Nathan Olivarez-Giles in Los Angeles and Rebecca Cole in Washington contributed to this report.
