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Last week’s layoffs at Principal Financial Group Inc. felt like the recession’s formal arrival in Central Iowa.

We’ve had plenty of problems around here this year, but large-scale layoffs get into the head of the average white-collar employee, the kind of worker we’ve focused on recruiting. The people who got pink slips weren’t tempting fate with get-rich-quick schemes, but the recession tapped them on the shoulder anyway.

For decades, Des Moines has been the place to come for a good, stable job in the financial and insurance sectors. Now we have a surplus of such employees, all scrambling to find work.

The Principal downsizing was minuscule compared with others around the nation. But combine it with the earlier cuts by Wells Fargo & Co., and it changes the way workers think about the Des Moines job market. Everyone who gets laid off thinks it was unfair, and tells that to everyone who will listen.

In the age of social networking, real-time reports went sailing out of the Principal campus even as the bad news was being dished out. A message we saw from a layoff victim did not suggest a positive, I’ll-make-the-best-of-it attitude. It was angry and bitter. His next message was sent from a bar.

The laid-off workers aren’t the only ones affected. As companies shed payroll burdens, more responsibility falls to the already stressed taxpayers. According to an Associated Press report last week, five states “are in danger of running out of funds they use to pay unemployment benefits, meaning they may have no choice but to increase taxes on employers, cut benefits for laid-off workers or borrow the cash.”

Iowa is not on that list yet and may never be. But Indiana, for example, planned to borrow $330 million from the federal government to cover unemployment claims. As if the feds need more loan requests. This is some spiral we’re in. Every action sets the stage for the next burst of bad news. And then comes the one after that.