Yes, we're very concerned about this. Most of the job loss so far has been in the private sector, but it's just recently that we're starting to see some public sector job losses. I'm not saying this just because we represent public employees, but during a recession public sector employees should not be laid off. I mean, the government should be trying to stimulate the economy. And it was very refreshing to see a change in economic philosophy over the past year on this.
We're very concerned that governments have now become fixated on reducing deficits. All of a sudden there was a change in perspective, and people recognize that we need spending in this area. We're seeing some layoffs--more in the educational sector just recently--and we're very concerned about that expanding later. If there is rising unemployment, there is a possibility that we may have a double-dip recession in this way.
In the past two recessions, governments essentially caused the recessions by hiking up interest rates. That, to a certain extent, is a fact. So they were able to get the economy going by lowering interest rates. Now we can't get interest rates any lower, so we have to have fiscal policy and we have to have a strong public sector to keep the economy going--not just to provide public services, but to keep the economy going so we don't have a double-dip recession.