Discouraged Workers: Ashamed, Invisible And An Enduring Statistic

Like many older, unemployed workers, Geoff Dutton would like to find a job. The former software-manual writer has been out of work for 18 months, and during that time businesses have increasingly shifted to Internet-based systems for storing data rather than having their own in-house servers.

"The companies that were in that area kept looking for people who had been in that area, and that wasn't me," he told NPR recently. After being out of work for so long, Dutton worries that his skills are slipping away and he thinks that has contributed to his inability to find work. "I wasn't up on the new version of everything anymore," he said.