Think times are tough?

Like everyone else, Texans are getting daily doses of economic horror stories. This isn't unusual for those in industrialized states, where U.S. manufacturers have been exporting jobs abroad for years, leaving legions without work — or the hope of finding any.

Consumer confidence is a key element of economic prosperity, and until now Texans have been among the nation's most confident consumers. In a survey conducted throughout 2008, Gallup asked 100,000 employed Americans if their employers were hiring or letting people go. They did the subtraction, and every state produced a positive index last year.

Only four states had higher job-market indexes than Texas: Wyoming, Louisiana, South Dakota and Oklahoma. The worst were Michigan, Rhode Island, Florida and Nevada.

But Gallup's chief economist, Dennis Jacobe, also warned that all but two of the 10-best job-market states are big oil producers that prospered from last summer's big price run-up that has since declined. He also warned: “Over the course of 2008 ... in each state, this net score has been positive. However, over the last several weeks, it has been zero or negative as job losses have mounted.”

And since the financial industry started unraveling, joblessness has spread quickly.

More than 2.6 million jobs have vanished since November, and last week several companies announced plans to eliminate 100,000 more positions.

“For whatever reason, historically our unemployment rate has always been lower, although our income is too,” says Dick Lavine, senior fiscal analyst for the Center for Public Policy Priorities. “We're not going to be as bad off as the Midwest or the housing-bubble states like Florida and Nevada, but there is no way (Texas) can escape it.”

So let's not get smug and let shortsighted leaders use this recession as an excuse to cut critical social services.

Instead, let's take advantage of our relative good fortune now to seriously improve Texas' abysmal social safety net — especially for children — and prepare now for the economic decline likely to engulf us soon.

State unemployment hit 6 percent in December, and the Texas Workforce Commission expects it to rise to 6.9 percent before the end of the year.

The implications are huge, because typically joblessness doesn't peak until two years after a recession's end. Our state's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund will probably run a deficit because our leaders have refused to implement some key reforms.

“If we would just make some reforms in our unemployment insurance system, we will get $500 million (in federal funds) to pay unemployment claims,” says Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

We must also face the reality that many newly jobless Texans will also lose their health-care insurance, inflating the nation's largest uninsured population.

More federal money will be available to enroll more kids in Medicaid and CHIP, but how much we get will depend on how much our Legislature invests.

Let's be wise, for once. Now is the worst time to cut back on the most basic of services.