The economic condition of some 4.6 million people has plummeted in recent months.

As we've been chronicling for a few weeks, because of unexpected inflation—as evidenced by rising transportation costs, taxes, and rents—New Yorkers have begun to raise their voices in protest.

Today, amplified by rising unemployment and underemployment, pessimism resounds among not only the poorest workers but also middle-class professionals. Workers are pinching pennies and praying not to lose their jobs, a prospect that would mean going

without health insurance and in some cases losing their homes. For most, the economy is more fearsome than terrorism.

Standing behind a counter stocked with cheeses and olives, Jimmy Istavrof, a New York grocer, prefers to remember the good old days. Those days were only three or four years ago. Back then, in his Queens store, Istavrof talked animatedly with his customers about buying and selling on the stock market, while in a corner the television followed the pulse of the Dow all day.

Today these same customers buy only the bare essentials. They no longer dream of becoming millionaires, only of keeping their jobs. For these middle-class people, nothing is secure anymore.

For the working class—many of them immigrants—the story is much the same. Damian Gonzalez works in a factory where, until last year, he clocked forty hours a week and "sometimes there was good overtime." But those days of plenty are now a distant memory. At the beginning of this year the factory reduced its workers' hours. "Even at the busiest times, I work at most three days a week," Gonzalez said. "It takes a part-time night job for me to cover my family's basic needs."

Gonzalez's plunging fortunes offer a microcosm of the current state of the economy as millions at the bottom of the economic spectrum experience it, reflecting a national economy in which insecurity lies at the heart of daily life in the United States. Jobs are the only life raft in this storm. For some, job anxiety is so great that in the hope of pleasing their bosses they no longer use their vacation time, because work, once lost, is so difficult to find again.

This is why, even if the economy shows signs of slow recovery (according to the 'experts'!) no recovery is being felt. Job creation is simply not keeping pace with demand, and so we are witnessing a recovery without new jobs. The most recent unemployment rate is 6.4 percent, but this number only tells part of the story. The Department of Labor arrived at this statistic through a telephone survey in which people were asked whether they have looked for a job in the past two weeks. Those who say "no" are not counted in the unemployment rate. In the end, then, this country holds the individual entirely responsible for getting ahead in life. The circumstances that surround you do not count for anything.

This recession has not only hit the poorest sectors (for example, the 59 percent of Hispanic teenagers in New York who are unemployed), but has also had a profound impact on the middle class. The press is full of stories of executives with $100,000 salaries who have been cast into poverty overnight, without hope of recouping their lost status.

Such is the case of Don Dolan, a Chicago computer systems administrator. After sending out seven thousand resumes, Dolan decided it was time to get a job that would feed his four children. He ended up working at a movie theater ticket counter for $6.25 an hour.

This phenomenon is spreading among white-collar workers not for lack of high-tech jobs, but because many companies are exporting such jobs to the other side of the globe—to China and India, where they can hire ten professionals for the price of one America, in order to survive in the current economy.

These companies admit this openly.

"In the face of continued global recession, more and more U.S. firms are realizing that it makes enormous economic sense to shift those jobs that require high-tech skills at competitive pricing so as to sustain the downturn and save the companies from going bankrupt," said Som Mittal, the chairman of NASSCOM, to the more than 800 delegates at the NASSCOM Strategy Summit that took place this year in India.

This economic crisis has made underemployment and downward mobility the new American paradigm, displacing the myth of eternal upward mobility, the “American dream.” According to ABC News, some 4.6 million people have experienced a sharp drop in their economic status. Along with their jobs, many people have lost their health care. Many of those who now lack a steady salary have lost their houses because they couldn't keep up with the mortgage payments.

In early August millions of Americans began receiving $400 checks courtesy of the Bush administration, which is betting on this simple tax rebate to jump-start the economy. But it doesn't look like the administration will succeed in reversing widespread pessimism about the course of the economy, a design that appears to have slipped out of the president's hands.

The federal deficit of $450 billion (three times the national debt of Argentina), combining with the lack of clarity about the war in Iraq, will foster resentment and bitterness.

Says Jimmy Istavrof, the grocer. “They told us that things were going to change after the fall of Saddam. This, clearly, has not happened.”