Pink slips/face lifts

Hold the champagne and turn off “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

The recession is not over yet – and the latest trend toward plastic surgery proves it.

According to one source, “hundreds of people in the Chicago area are turning to plastic surgery to keep or land a job.”

And you know what they say: If it’s happening in Chicago, it’s probably happening all over.

(Except, we hope, for the part about city officials walking around with their hands out and dead people voting on election day.)

You don’t have to be an economist to realize that this is serious.

If the jobless need tummy tucks, face lifts or “breast augmentation” to land a new job, it won’t be long before those procedures become another routine part of unemployment benefits.

After all, this is America, where no need goes unmet, even if it just got invented a few hours ago.

If this trend takes hold, it will cause more people without jobs look better than people with jobs, which seems unfair.

And if more people get Botox injections for whatever reason, it will be harder to find anyone able to make any expressions with their frozen faces, leading to all sorts of confusion.

The bottom line is that the economy will get worse, not better, causing more people to get laid off … and call up plastic surgeons the next day.

That would only benefit plastic surgeons, who do OK anyway.

We have to nip this thing in the bud. My proposal: A national “Hire the Homely” campaign.

It won’t be pretty – literally – but at least it will stave off national bankruptcy for a few more years.