Before the flood.

• Position: Statewide

How carefree those days before the crash seem now. Sure, there was plenty to worry about in 2008, before Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy sent the U.S. financial industry into a tailspin, but nobody had to deal yet with fallout from the crisis--especially the massive loss of jobs. The statewide unemployment rate, though it seems to have peaked, is still much higher than in the months leading up to and immediately after the crash, but a few other measures of the job market were nearing pre-crisis territory at the end of last year. The state's insured unemployment rate--the percentage of jobless claims to employment covered by insurance--dropped to a seasonally adjusted 3.1 % in December, the lowest it has been since October 2008, before the job market felt the full effects of the financial meltdown. One reason might be that workers who get extensions of their jobless benefits aren't counted in the insured rate, which covers about 95% of nonfarm employment. But the number of initial unemployment claims also is running closer to...