We've seen the early job-loss and unemployment numbers, but how do we measure the personal cost of the meltdown?

"'I've never seen anything like this before,' said Phyllis Waters, president of the Professional Child Care Provider Network of Prince George's County. 'You're seeing people just dropping out. . . . They're taking them out of day care and putting them into homes with grandmothers and neighbors and whoever else.'"

-- from "Squeezed on All Sides, Parents Forgo Day Care" in today's Washington Post

by Ken

Cheery reading. Before long it shouldn't require all that much creativity to find ways of measuring the pain caused by the economic meltdown and recession. For the time being, though, we have to settle for anecdotal evidence, like this report by Donna St. George.

The subhead, by the way, is "Education, Safety Sacrificed in Fiscal Crunch."

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