the recession deepens

Today the firm I work for announced it was cutting its shift pattern from two shifts to one shift due to lack of orders surrounding the credit crunch.
If this single shift pattern remains in place in my workplace for a full year, I estimate that this would equate to around a £6 million loss to the Merseyside economy in lost wages alone.
That is just from loss of earnings from my work colleagues. When you take the suppliers and service industry that provide us with goods and services into account, you can multiply the loss to the Mersey economy several fold.
The devastating effects of this to our region are becoming more apparent on a daily basis. Just look at the banking sector and see what is happening at the Alliance and Leicester in Bootle.
I hope some of the government initiatives that are currently in place reap dividends soon, or some far sighted individual comes up with a solution to this issue, or else I fear Merseyside will take a long time to recover from the worst effects of this recession.