My Unemployed Life: Why Do People Treat Us Like We're Invisible?

There's a powerlessness that comes with long-term unemployment. I think of it as a quiet desperation, an urgent need to find work coupled with a frustrating inability to make that happen.

The unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for so long -- 3½ years! -- that you might forget that only a few years ago things were much better. From 2001-2009, unemployment averaged a little over 5 percent.