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Each of the three newscasts filed an additional feature on the recession economy. For ABC's A Closer Look, Bill Weir (embargo'ed link) took us to the nation's public school classrooms, where teachers are personally filling the shortfall caused by budget cuts. Some buy supplies out of their own pockets; others find themselves fundraising. For NBC's Hard Times series, Rehema Ellis tried to find the bright side of unemployment: a midlife layoff can give a worker a chance to switch careers. "Across the country vocational schools report enrolment is up." CBS had Kelly Wallace consult Census Bureau data for poverty and unemployment levels. She found that in small towns in the industrial heartland--Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois--the recession was already under way in 2005. A possible remedy for revival, she suggested, is the invigoration of small town economies by an influx of immigrants, attracted by the affordable housing and willing to work as unskilled labor
