Tell Me, Who Has Been Unemployed for TWO Years,

how rough it is for the long-term unemployed.

I don't expect to ever recover from what the school district did to me. In past layoffs, I always did better than before. Not this time:

But there is no sign yet of a surge in the kinds of stable, above-average-income jobs that have been the backbone of the nation's prosperity in the past. Healthcare and temporary jobs have been leading the pack, but many of the jobs come with relatively modest wages.

The problem has another, less direct effect as well: Because many of the long-term unemployed are older workers, some have little choice but to retire earlier than planned. That means more people will be drawing Social Security and Medicare, and fewer will be contributing to those programs through payroll taxes.

As in previous downturns, a large share of the long-term unemployed are in manufacturing and construction.

But most of today's workers who have been jobless for 27 weeks or more are in sales, office and other service industry jobs, including more than 1 million in management and professional occupations.

Some economists doubt that workers in general would lose skills after just six months or even a year or two out of work.

But there is widespread agreement that, for whatever reasons, long periods of unemployment tend to make it tougher to get reemployed.