By the numbers: Long waits, harsh impact of being joblessUSA TODAY and Gallup interviewed Americans who are unemployed — those who aren't working and either are looking for a job or plan to look — and those who are underemployed. The underemployed are those working part time who want to work full time. People who don't have a job and don't plan to look for one aren't included in this survey.
Who are America's jobless?
By Peter DaSilva, for USA TODAY
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
The jobless have lost more than their jobs.
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of unemployed Americans, most of those surveyed have lost any optimism they will find a job soon or end up with work they really want to do. Two-thirds struggle to pay their bills. Nearly half have had to deal with such major personal problems as moving to cheaper housing or fighting depression.
"One day you have a job, and the next day they call you into a big meeting and tell you in 30 days you'll no longer be employed," says Lakiesha McPherson, 32, of Philadelphia, who was laid off last June from her job as a middle-school counselor. She was among those surveyed. "At this moment, I'll take any job, just to say I have a job."
"I worked for 35 years straight ... and then everything changed," says Ray Burton of Placerville, Calif. During the construction downturn two years ago, he lost his job selling plumbing supplies. "I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. If you've been out of work for six months, nobody wants to hire you. Add being 56 years old to that equation, and it's hard."
The Great Recession has swelled an unhappy clan of Americans: the unemployed.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-01-25-1Ajobless25_CV_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
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