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.