Who would have thought just one year ago that so many Canadians would be saying this holiday season: 'All I want for Christmas is a job'?

With the economy down and stock markets in free fall, nothing seems certain anymore.

According to one survey, almost a quarter of employers across the country plan to reduce their headcount in the coming year. If it happened to you, how would you cope? Who would you turn to for help?

Just a few years ago, St. Thomas was booming, an almost perfect combination of industry and small town charm. The Southwestern Ontario city offered jobs and prosperity to a growing population. Most of those jobs were in the auto manufacturing industry and many people were employed at one of the twenty car plants. At a time when the auto industry is suffering, so is this community of 30,000 people.

The Bartlett family knows this firsthand.

After working for five years at St. Thomas's Sterling plant, which makes Freightliner trucks, Denise Bartlett was let go and with no compensation. Her husband, Wayne, is being laid off from Sterling, next March. Wayne's mother, Bonnie, was also let go from her job at Alcoa - a company that makes truck parts - a week before Christmas.

"Everybody was proud to be there making nice trucks. Customers were coming through. It was like winning the lottery," Wayne told W-FIVE.

The family said they have no choice but to sell their home, even though they only moved in a few years ago. But selling their $400,000 house in a depressed market will not be easy. Housing prices are falling. Many "For Sale" signs line the streets of St. Thomas -- ten new listings appeared in one day alone -- and few people are buying. The London and St. Thomas Association of Realtors says sale prices are down 52 per cent compared to last year.

Bonnie, who lives with Wayne and Denise, knows there is little she can do to change things. " I don't have control over it, so you just kind of go with the flow. I flipped burgers before, I can do it again" she said.

The Bartletts aren't alone. In the last year, 80 per cent of auto-related manufacturing plants in St. Thomas have announced layoffs. In several cases entire companies have closed down or are planning closures in 2009.

St. Thomas is a bellwether for what's happening in other industry towns. In November 2008, 71,000 jobs were lost in Ontario. Of those, 67,000 were in the auto sector. More layoffs are expected and many people say that Canada is facing a deep recession.

St. Thomas Mayor Cliff Barwick said the economic troubles aren't isolated to the auto industry. He said that for every job lost at one of the auto-manufacturing plants, seven more jobs are affected in the community.

And once people have lost their jobs, it's hard to get a new one.

In July, Luanne Demers was laid off from her job as a human resources administrative coordinator at Presstran Industries. Since then she has applied for more than 100 jobs and has only been called for four interviews -- and yet she's been told that she's lucky.

"The first two interviews I went on, they told me that I should be proud of myself that there was over two hundred applicants for the job and that I'd been short listed for the interview, which was great -- but I didn't get the job," she said.

The trouble is that everyone is competing for the same few jobs. With severance and E.I. pay running out, a growing number of laid off workers are now signing up for welfare and relying on charity to feed their families.

Brian Burley runs 'The Caring Cupboard', a food bank in St. Thomas. He says they are serving between 30 and 40 more families this year, than they were a year ago.

In some cases, Burley is seeing some familiar faces. "A lot of the folks who used to give us donations are now coming in our door to get help. So I hate when that happens," he said.

Times may be hard, but many in the city like to remember that they've been through tough times before -- and survived.

St. Thomas was once a major railroad centre, the halfway point between Chicago and the Eastern Seaboard. After World War Two, trains didn't stop there anymore and the downtown station shut down.

But St. Thomas bounced back, attracting manufacturing plants and factories to the city. Mayor Barwick hopes that history will repeat itself- for the better. Barwick and his council hope to replace those closing factories with new imports.

In fact, they've already managed to attract two Japanese auto parts companies to St. Thomas and they are hoping that an upcoming trade mission to Japan will drum up more business.

As for the Bartletts, unless things turn around quickly, it could mean a break-up of the family. Bonnie says she'll stay in St. Thomas while the younger Bartletts are contemplating a move to get work. "You know we're going to move on. We're going to get through it. There are people worse off than we are," Wayne said.