Kmart's new recession play: Discounts for the unemployed

Retailers may be seeing some improvement in their businesses, but they have one big challenge ahead: A lot of their customers are still out of work.

So Kmart has come up with a novel way to hang on to those customers until they're back at work and spending freely by giving them discounts now. The chain has introduced a Smart Assist program that will give the unemployed nationwide a 20 percent discount off 1,500 food and household staples from Kmart's various store brands.