Jobless: 10 Percent Is Tougher Than It Used To Be

JEANNINE AVERSA

WASHINGTON (AP) — It hurts more to be unemployed now than the last time the jobless rate hit 10 percent.

Americans have more than triple the debt they had in 1982, and less than half the savings. They spend 10 weeks longer off the job. And a bigger share of them have no health insurance, leaving them one medical emergency away from financial ruin.

For these reasons, the unemployed are more vulnerable today to foreclosure and bankruptcy than they were a generation ago.

Donald Schenk knows. He's been without work both times. It's worse now, he says.

Back in the early 1980s, when Schenk lost his job at a phone company, he was able to find several temporary jobs — including one testing pinball machines — to make ends meet until he landed full-time work nearly two years later.

But now Schenk, 55, of the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Ill., has been seeking work for a year and a half after losing his information technology job. Potential employers aren't interested "if you are not a perfect fit," he says.