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American Dream Fails In Inland Empire

TRANSCRIPT
Listen to the full audio broadcast of this story here

Kai Ryssdal: The recession is, officially, over. A lot of experts and some economic indicators agree on that. But the experts and the indicators don’t know what they’re talking about.

In California’s Inland Empire, that’s definitely true. The Inland Empire’s out in in the desert east of L.A. with 4.3 million people living there, nearly double the population of Nevada. In the decades before the recession, it was the place families went to to pursue the American Dream. There were cheap suburban houses with two-car garages and good jobs in construction and warehousing and trucking. There were so many jobs, in fact, that the unemployment rate fell below 5 percent. Now, it’s triple that in many towns, and the dream has turned into something of a nightmare.

Today, in the first of a two-part series, Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman takes a trip to to see what the future might hold.

Click Here to read the complete transcript by Mitchell Hartman on Marketplace published 11/21/2011.

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