Richard M. Daley Quotes

First National Bank laid off 1,000 people; where do they go? There are no jobs for them. So we are having serious economic problems in this country. We are in a real economic crisis.

The middle-class ladder has rungs that no longer exist for many trying to climb higher. Instead, for too many, in too many places, their chore is simply trying to hang on.

A recession is predominantly for the middle class. Where I come from, the majority of people have always lived in a recession.

The real people who suffer when business is leaving or not successful are the people in the middle class.

I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike. I know that because I don't come from a wealthy background.

Both chronic, long-term poverty and downward mobility from the middle class are in the same category of things that America likes not to think about.

I can tell you that when I travel the state, when I talk to people, they are really struggling, in a very real way. They're losing their jobs, they're losing their homes, they're dealing with financial challenges.

Right now, America's middle class is struggling to meet their basic needs.

Our businesses can't create jobs when they're losing revenue, and the unemployed can't apply for jobs when they can't pay their phone bill.

Bankruptcy exposes the economic vulnerability and insecurity of middle class women.

The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle ... present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.

Income inequality has become so prevalent in the U.S. that examples of its negative impact on the middle class are as common as Kanye West saying something cringeworthy in the media.

In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before.

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.

Most of the people I meet who are on unemployment are people who have had jobs for 25 years, lost them; they've been knocking on doors every week.

While some people are certainly seeing economic benefits, many others are unemployed, underemployed, without health insurance and struggling to make ends meet.

Every day I've got to hear about unemployment and people starving.

I didn't feel the Depression at all. I always had a pocketful of money.

Nevada was hit hardest by the recession - highest unemployment, highest foreclosure rate, highest bankruptcy rate.

The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules.

The people who do not get jobs are often the most vulnerable in our society, and joblessness is a terrible plight for anyone who suffers from it.

It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

What keeps me up at night is poverty and unemployment.

Millions of people are falling out of the middle class into the ranks of the poor.

In a packed programme tonight, we will be talking to an out-of-work contortionist who says he can no longer make ends meet.