Due to a combination of high energy prices, a strong dollar and competition from overseas, manufacturers have been manhandled for most of this decade -- and ground zero for the loss of factory jobs is Michigan. Its crumbling auto industry explains a large part of the state's nation-leading unemployment rate of 9.6 percent. Around the state, and across the country, the state's automakers have had to close plants and showrooms, cut back workers' hours and reduce wages as consumers' appetite for new cars dwindles along with their job security.

But the manufacturing slowdown has gone far beyond the industrial Midwest. South Carolina's jobless rate has reached 8.4 percent, the third-highest, as it struggles to replace lost textile and apparel manufacturing jobs with the type of high-tech industries that North Carolina has been able to attract.