About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression. The bigger the gap on someone's resume, the more questions employers have. "(Employers) think: 'Oh, well, there must be something really wrong with them because they haven't gotten a job in 6 months, a year, 2 years.' But that's not necessarily the case," said Marjorie Gardner-Cruse with the Hollywood Worksource Center.... Here's another problem: more than 1 million of the long-term unemployed have run out of unemployment benefits, leaving them without the money to get new training, buy new clothes, or even get to job interviews.

As the deficit obsession continues, here's some cheery news

And, of course, the long-term unemployed not receiving benefits aren't in a position to buy things, or drive demand that would drive new jobs. Krugman explains it better: "We are not, after all, suffering from supply-side problems. We don’t have high unemployment because workers lack the necessary skills, or are stuck in the wrong industries or the wrong locations; the hypothesis that we’re mainly suffering structural unemployment has been repeatedly shot down by evidence. This is a demand-side slump; all we need to do is create more demand."

How to create more demand seems to be the crux of the problem, and the sacrifice to the deficit and "live within our means" stance that relies on creating more tax cuts and credits to the private sector to try to coax them in to saving us just isn't going to cut it. Via BTD, former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill explains why:

I must say I'm kind of amused by some of the conversation about companies hoarding $1.5 trillion worth of cash, or something, because I had a rule when I was in the private sector for 25 years, including 13 running Alcoa, and that is, don't hire people unless you have somebody demanding goods that you can't produce with the people you already have. Right? So it seems patently unrealistic to me to urge people to spend money unless there's a demand that they're not able to satisfy with their existing resources. . . . Why would you? I mean, it's crazy. It's not a charitable function if you're running a business to say oh, my goodness, we have so many millions of people unemployed, I should rush out and spend my cash and hire more people if there's no demand for the goods. It's crazy to me. . . . [W]hen I was in big enterprises, I kept a wary eye on Washington, but my decisions were not guided by research and development tax credits and whatever mischief they happened to be up to at any particular moment. I paid attention to customers and potential customers, and getting more people to use our product around the world. . . .

It's a vicious cycle, yes, but chronic unemployment—worse than during the Great Depression—isn't going to be solved by business tax credits and hope. The pivot to jobs in the White House needs to be more permanent than the one in January 2010.