Misery Loves Company ...

Well, that's what they say.

And the Labor Department confirmed this morning that more than 650,000 joined the ranks of the miserable on the unemployment line in February, bringing the unemployment rate to 8.1%.

To put things in perspective, that is the highest unemployment rate in a quarter of a century. More than 3.3 million jobs have been lost in the last six months alone.

Here in Texas, the general assumption was that things would not be as bad here as they were in the rest of the country. But the Dallas Morning News threw a bucket of cold water on that assumption yesterday, reporting that more than 75,000 jobs were lost in Texas in January, bringing the state's unemployment rate to 6.4%.

That's nearly a full percentage point increase over the previous month.

Tom Pauken, chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, may have won the award for the understatement of the year (so far). "It’s a significant loss," he said.

Brendan Case of the Morning News reported, "Texas employers had added 117,500 net jobs between the end of 2007 and October 2008. But they began cutting jobs in November, while the national economy's woes intensified."

The numbers suggest that no sector of the economy is truly safe.

And, if that knowledge isn't enough to make you miserable, you must have a job that is truly bullet-proof.

Tell me, where does one go to find such a job?