The unemployed life

Glimpses of what it's like:


Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: Over 15 million Americans were jobless in November. This doesn't include those who are working part-time but would prefer to work full time. Nor does it include a record 1.3 million who are too discouraged even to look for work. Nor does it take account of the fact that most families are dependent on two breadwinners. So to figure out the true impact on most families, all these numbers have to be doubled.

More than two million jobless Americans are entering the holiday season seized with varying levels of foreboding, worry or even panic over what lies ahead as they cope with the expected cutoff of their unemployment benefits. By the end of December, more than two million are set to lose their extended benefits, according to estimates by theNational Employment Law Project, and about a million more by the end of January.

The legions of long-term unemployed will probably be idle for significantly longer than their counterparts in past recessions, reducing their chances of eventually finding a job even when the economy becomes more robust. New data from the Labor Department shows that people out of work fewer than five weeks are more than three times as likely to find a job in the coming month than people who have been out of work for over a year, with a re-employment rate of 30.7 percent versus 8.7 percent, respectively.