It can mean a willingness by companies and even taxpayers to spend more to help workers through one of the most wrenching transitions in decades.
Newly stay-at-home parents seemed to suffer the most wrenching transition to the suburbs.
It must make the wrenching transition to a free-market system.
Among them is China's wrenching transition from a planned to a market-oriented economy.
They face a wrenching transition as they try to retool for the new age.
The backdrop is the wrenching transition from state-owned enterprises, many of which are not competitive.
"After five years of what was sometimes a wrenching transition, the 'bureaus versus New York' question has become a non-issue," he said.
While the transformation taking place in Japan today is going to make it a formidable competitor over time, it will be a wrenching transition.
To say that Popov had to undergo a wrenching transition to a new environment would not be wholly accurate.
But Poles keep flocking west to find work, money and goods while their own economy undergoes the wrenching transition to market principles.