Unemployed workers filled the third floor of the Employment Security Commission [in the Charleston, South Carolina area] on Wednesday morning. The mood was somber and businesslike.

One-hundred claims were processed Tuesday, more than double the number of claims handled the same time last year, said Chuck Rein, a commission staffer who advises veterans at the Lockwood Boulevard office.

Hal Wynn, a radiology technician with 35 years of experience, said he was recently laid off indefinitely from the Medical University of South Carolina. He would like to visit family in Missouri during the holidays but said he can't afford it.

"This is the first time I've ever been laid off. It's kind of a shock," he said. Wynn, 58, said his gift-buying would be "kind of slim" because of his financial situation. His 14-year-old son lives with him.

Read it all from yesterday's local paper here.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * South Carolina

1. Vintner wrote: “We don’t have Christmas any more because of lack of funds,”... My sympathies for the plight of all the poor people mentioned in this article aside, is it not a result of our material nature that we have ingrained into people (the speaker of this quote is 27) that Christmas is something to be bought?  In another report, I read a person saying, “I guess Christmas won’t be happening this year…” Now couple this story with the story today about the poor worker at Wal-Mart being trampled to death becase of Black Friday sales. Yes, Virginia, this is what we have become. November 28, 8:05 pm | [comment link]

2. libraryjim wrote: Ah, I see that the story of the Grinch (the cartoon, not the Jim Carey mess) is on this week.  Perhaps we need to re-read it to learn that the true meaning of Christmas is not in what we buy, but in what was freely given—The Love of God in the person of His son, incarnate. November 28, 11:44 pm | [comment link]

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