Clerics thundered that it was a woman's God-given duty to suffer the pain of labor.

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And labor, with accompanying pain, fast heartbeat and hormonal changes, "that's the most dangerous and challenging time, " Dr. Franklin says.

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While the private sector is adding jobs at a pace that at least satisfies most economists, the public labor force is in pain.

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But management and labor worked through the shared pain, and things are looking pretty good at Ford these days.

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But the move would help the board and management make a better case to labor unions that they are spreading the pain to other GM constituents, including shareholders and executives, whose ranks are also shrinking while merit pay raises are being eliminated.

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In every conversation, the pain point was about finding skilled labor.

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When individuals in other nations suffer the economic pain of inflation through declining investment, we too hurt for the natural expansion of the global division of labor that authors our economic specialization being halted to varying degrees.

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