Riots broke out, unemployment soon soared to 20 percent and the newly jobless marched on Washington.
There's no escaping the uncomfortable truth - that the SME sector cannot, and will not, ride to the rescue of the newly jobless public sector workers.
CBS's newly jobless "Mr. and Mrs. Big Fan" camp out overnight at Fox studios for the first tryout.
Many of the newly jobless have college degrees or graduate degrees.
One reason was that many of the newly jobless were thought to have not yet begun the search for other work and thus were not counted in the current data.
When he finds them, he places newspaper advertisements, schedules visits and snatches up the best of the newly jobless.
The newly jobless have been finding ways to cope: taking odd jobs, selling some belongings, cutting back.
But for some of the newly jobless, welfare might be the only option.
But Karen Cornwell, the agency's director, said the calls from the newly jobless had not stopped, either.
The latest increase in claims, which in part reflected bad weather in the Midwest, pushed the total of newly jobless people back to levels recorded in the spring.