B. Local economy job losses due to the above as well as the disappearance of the “house as ATM” effect.
Given that something like 25% of our employment is in the RE sector, I can see at least a 30-40% decline in the median income until we hit bottom.
RE sector employment is less than 25%, and unemployment in that sector is still far from 100%. According to http://piggington.com/october_employment_0, construction, finance, and retail lost only 4,000 jobs since October ’06.
Out of 1.3m jobs, 117,089 are in construction; 64,846 are in finance and insurance; 40,443 in “real estate and rental and leasing”. Much of “finance and insurance” is not related to RE. “Real estate and rental and leasing” includes employees of apartment complexes, commercial RE, etc.