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"Income is down," Liu said. "Revenue is down." Montana has ranked consistently among the least economically stressed states in the AP index. Yet it's begun to show cracks. The state's wood-products industry has been declining. And the closing of a Smurfit-Stone linerboard mill at the end of December was a blow to the Missoula area. Each job paid an average $70,000 a year. Montana's Stress score rose from 6.04 in December 2008 to 7.71 in December 2009. The state suffered housing price declines, a sluggish mining sector and sharp drop in overtime pay for workers, said Patrick Barkey, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana. "It's not like Montana was doing so great," Barkey said. "It's just that the rest of the country was doing worse." In the past six months, foreclosure rates have risen fastest in a stretch of Western counties extending from Montana to Arizona. Foreclosures also have surged in manufacturing counties in the industrial Midwest, parts of Florida and metro Atlanta. "Consistently high unemployment continues to feed into the foreclosure problem," Snaith said. "We've already got significant foreclosures taking place already. Now, more traditional ones are taking place because one or more household members have lost their jobs." Bankruptcy rates in the past six months have grown fastest in Nevada, Arizona, California and Utah. Counties with populations of at least 25,000 that saw the sharpest jump in year-to-year Stress scores in December all had sizable work forces in manufacturing and mining: Marshall County, Tenn.; Clinton, Ohio; Maury County, Tenn.; Jackson County, W.Va.; and Highland County, Ohio. The sharpest year-to-year increases in Stress scores in December for states were in Nevada, Alabama, West Virginia, Florida and Wyoming. The counties that endured the biggest increase in Stress over the past six months were summer vacation spots: Cheboygan County, Mich.; Worcester County, Md.; Cape May, N.J.; and Dare, N.C. Unemployment in these areas spiked after hotels, stores and restaurants closed for the season.
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