Faces beyond the numbers of long-term unemployed

J.R. Childress is up before the sun, bustling about in the French colonial brick house he built. He helps pack his wife's lunch, downs some eggs or cereal for breakfast, pores over online and newspaper job listings and hopes — even prays — this will be the day when his fortunes turn around.

He's determined to stay busy, job or no job, for sanity's sake. Maybe he'll help a neighbor. Exercise. Or check out computer blueprints of construction projects around Winston-Salem, N.C., to stay connected to the world where he thrived for three decades. Childress has been laid off twice since late 2009, most recently for 10 months.

"Every day is a struggle," he says in a soft drawl. "The struggle is the unknown. You've worked your way up the ladder and you get to a point in life and a position in work where you're comfortable ... then all of a sudden everything goes away. It's like being thrown into a hole and you're climbing to get up, but it's greased. There's no way of getting out."

The frustrations of one 53-year-old North Carolina man are multiplied millions of times over across time zones and generations in a country still gripped by economic anxiety, despite increasing signs of recovery. And they resound in a presidential campaign pitting an incumbent defending his economic record against GOP opponents who are attacking it.

Unemployment in January was at its lowest level in three years — 8.3 percent — and 1.8 million jobs were added last year, compared with about 1 million in 2010. But there's still a long way to go: There are 5.6 million fewer jobs than there were when the recession began in late 2007.

About 12.8 million people are out of work and what's especially troubling, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is the large number of long-term unemployed — more than 40 percent have been jobless more than six months.

The long-term unemployed don't fit into any neat category. They're young and old. They have high school diplomas and master's degrees. Some become so discouraged, they stop looking for a time or become mid-life college students. Others find temporary jobs, then return to the jobless rolls for long stretches. In 2011, the average length of being out of work was 39 weeks — about nine months.

But statistics tell only part of the story. They don't gauge the despair of a thirtysomething office manager who has stopped counting how many resumes he's sent out. Or the apprehension of a 60-ish tool-and-die maker who lost his job, returned to school, but still can't find work — and doubts he ever will again.