Those jobs look fairly good going into 2006. We won't see a lot of hiring there, but the economy looks strong enough to maintain level of employment we have.

We did a (New England Economic Partnership) forecast in October, and we had 16,000 jobs added in 2006. Those are still reasonable (projections) given conditions at national level.

It's just another source of concern as to the strength of the Connecticut economy. The state has been slow to recover the jobs that were lost during the downturn.

The reality is that the economy is in great shape. It's created lots of good jobs?not bad jobs. We haven't created a whole bunch of hamburger flipping jobs.

The fact that you've gained no purchasing power in 11 years is discouraging and problematic for people in the bottom 20 percent. On the other hand, if you look at other states that have some of the similar structural characteristics of Connecticut, you see that their bottom 20 percent are worse off. Things are bad, but they could be worse.

You'll find that diesel fuel is on the rise, too. So prices on food, dry goods and general merchandise at retailers will go up because it's more expensive to get it here.