| * Research finds that many who have been unemployed describe "devastated" lives A Rutgers University study released today provides a grim, detailed picture of the severe impact that long-term unemployment continues to have on the lives of millions of Americans more than five years after the end of the Great Recession. About one-third of the long-term unemployed workers — six months or more — in the study, based on surveys of unemployed and employed Americans across the nation, said they had been "devastated" and suffered a permanent change in their lifestyle by their jobless experience. The study, titled "Left behind: The long-term unemployed struggle in an improving economy," found that one in five workers laid off in the last five years are still unemployed. And it showed how far long-term jobless workers slip compared with employed workers. Fifty-one percent of long-term jobless workers said they had a lot less income and savings than they did five years ago, while only 23 percent of employed workers said they had suffered similar economic damage, the study found. Sixty-one percent of the long-term unemployed said they did not expect their finances to improve in the next five years, the study found. That was about 11 percentage points higher than the assessment by employed workers of their finances over the next five years. "While the worst effects of the Great Recession are over for... |
