The Long And Short Of Long-Term Unemployment [Infographic]

One in four have not had enough to eat

    By Mariya Pylayev

Like "credit default swaps" and "quantitative easing," "long-term unemployment" was a term seldom heard before the 2007 financial crisis. Now it is a very grave reality for 1.3 million Americans, and a looming possibility for many others.

These are the people who have been out of work for 26 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and whose benefits have been subject to an unending game of political football. (The government does not count the over 700,000 "discouraged" workers who've stopped look for work.) Although 44 percent of the long-term jobless said they look for work every day, 30 percent of them haven't been on a job interview in a year, according to a new survey by Careerbuilder. While the economy slowly recovers, making back only a small fraction of the jobs it would if growth were healthy, these Americans are shut out from many opportunities simply because they have not been employed recently. Employers worry that they are damaged goods because no one else has hired them or because their skills have eroded.

Learn more about how the tremendous loss of income has affected the long-term unemployed in the infographic below.