The beleaguered city of Stockton is fighting to avert bankruptcy by cutting staff, including a quarter of the roughly 425-member police force. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg hide caption

San Joaquin sheriff detectives sift for human remains that were excavated from an abandoned ranch near Linden, Calif., on Sunday. Authorities say Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog wantonly murdered an unknown number of victims before their arrest in 1999. Now, one of the convicted killers is leading investigators to burial sites that have yielded hundreds of bones. Craig Sanders/AP hide caption

A new TV ad recently test-launched by the AFL-CIO discusses work, but never mentions unions specifically. Courtesy of the AFL-CIO hide caption

James Witt stands next to the foundation of a house he is building in Palo Alto. Witt has built a successful business by tearing down and rebuilding houses in Silicon Valley. Cindy Carpien/NPR hide caption

Day laborer Yohanni Castillo from Honduras waits for work outside a Lowes home improvement store in New Orleans. Jobs are drying up, he says, and he hasn't worked in four days. Even when work does comes along, he says, he doesn't always get paid. Richard Gonzales/NPR hide caption

Police break up an encampment for an Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Oakland, Calif. Police began clearing out the weeks-old encampment early Monday after issuing several warnings to demonstrators. Paul Sakuma/AP hide caption

Billings, Mont., has a diverse economic base, as evidenced by the confluence of stockyards, oil refineries and natural beauty. The unemployment rate for Billings' Yellowstone County was 5.3 percent in September, far lower than the national average. Richard Gonzales/NPR hide caption