Nov. 9--Has your boss cut your pay? Taken away overtime? Reduced your workweek? Eliminated raises? Chopped your benefits? Put you on an unpaid furlough?

Join the millions who have seen their take-home pay flattened by the double whammy of recession and its nationwide 10.2 percent-and-still-rising unemployment rate.

Compensation in 2009 has been cut by the largest amount in nearly two decades, with a government index of real average weekly earnings down 1.9 percent since its high point in December.

And the average workweek -- now down to 33 hours -- is the shortest on modern record.

In the Northern San Joaquin Valley, where the unemployment rate was more than 15 percent in September and is expected to rise through the winter months, wage stagnation is another blow to an already troubled economy.

Workers in the public and private sectors have seen their wages frozen and workweeks cut in an attempt to slash costs and avert larger layoffs.

In August, all of the more than 350 nonacademic staff at California Stanislaus University, Stanislaus, started taking two furlough days a month, the equivalent of about a 10 percent pay cut.

"People are hurting really bad, they are scared," said Frank Borrelli, president of the local chapter of the California State University Employees Union. "They are scared to spend money, not just on frivolous things but the basic necessities. One worker told me yesterday he was applying for food stamps. I can tell you, it's crazy."

This summer the nearly 400-employees covered by the Modesto City Employees Association and Modesto Confidential and Management Association agreed to one furlough day a month as well as no cost-of-living raises for its members.

Also over the summer, Gov. Schwarzenegger expanded the state's furlough program so that all 215,000 employees must take three unpaid days a month.

"This is a relatively poor area to start with, but because the economy took such a sharp turn here it will take that much longer to come out of the recession," said Shawn Kantor, professor of economics at the University of California at Merced. "When you compare median incomes for metro areas, Central Valley communities just don't do very well."

In California, a survey released by Grant Thornton LLP showed that 47 percent of chief financial officers in the state expected to reduce salaries in the the next six months, compared with 9 percent who planned to increase them.