Unemployment stories

When we hear an unemployment rate on the news, it's easy to dismiss it as a distant statistic. But behind every single one of those numbers is a person grappling with fear, shame, and suffocating anxiety.

Below I've collected personal responses showing the raw reality of joblessness.

Struggle and heartbreak. Unemployment is often the most stressful period of someones life. It doesn't matter if you've done "all the right things". Life is unfair.

You wont see this in the unemployment data (which now aren't being released due to the govt shutdown).

One bad turn and any of us could experience a sudden, terrifying financial freefall.

The candid responses reveal several recurring experiences. Financial scrambling and hardship is the obvious one. The emotional toll is devastating. A pervasive sense of shame, failure, and hopelessness. Many feel isolated, leading to intense loneliness and depression. For some, the mental health crisis is severe, with thoughts of self-harm.

Social isolation and loss of identity are common. Loneliness is a significant theme, with some noting they have lost friends due to their financial situation. The loss of a stable income can also mean the loss of identity, as individuals who were once successful, hardworking, and financially stable are suddenly dependent on government assistance or the kindness of others.

Those with disabilities, limited work authorization, or in their late 50s face compounding challenges, with limited options and fear that savings will run out before retirement or disability benefits kick in.

Here are the firsthand accounts (sourced from Reddit) from individuals sharing their experiences with unemployment.

Do you have your own experience to share? Please include in the comments.

1) I don’t have unemployment (benefits). So not good. But I have food in the freezer that will last me a little bit and I paid some bills up. Applying everyday. Have called to introduce myself and even gone in a couple places. I’m also back on rover to do drop ins. Canceled every subscription. I can live off nothing for a while. But it’s rough out here. I don’t wish thsi on anyone.

2) My buddy has applied to 55 jobs. Has called all of them, walked in to see a manager, pretty much non stop. Open interviews. His resume is fine and is the nicest dude around. He comes from absolute poverty (as do I). He has no where to go and there isn’t really a possibility for me to take him in.

He had the most successful year of his life in 2024. I helped him budget everything out. I have never seen him so happy before. He saved up a bunch of money and was honestly experiencing life for the first time. Not like reckless spending, but picking up hobbies, being outdoors, trying to read more since he has always been frugal. Sudden lay offs. Everything he saved is pretty much gone.

When I went to visit him we were sitting on the couch. He suddenly broke down crying and shaking. I haven’t seen this man cry the 18 years I have known him. He feels like a failure and that no one wants him.

I wish I could describe it to you how deeply depressing it is. He brought me over last year to show me this coffee table he got with coasters. It was just 50 bucks, but he didn’t really have any furniture. He was beyond happy. He went to his fridge and said “check it out” and pulled out a 6 pack of beer for us to have together.

He did everything right. No subscriptions, cheap phone plan (his phone was basically his computer), never ate out even once, utilized free programs at the library. He is extremely intelligent too.

The saddest part is he picked up water color painting landscape photos. He figured out how to make like a book out of it by binding at a class and titled it “my success story”. I am getting choked up just typing that.

3) i’m unemployed but i have limited income thanks to social security and donating plasma. but honestly, it sucks. i went from being nearly financially independent, and was definitely financially stable and nearly getting my own place, to being back on government assistance after 5 years, all thanks to circumstances beyond my control.

i’m lonely. i get very little social interaction. and those circumstances are still ongoing so that’s definitely not helping* either.

4) 56 years old and laid off from a factory I’d put 31 years into a year ago because of their financial difficulties. Received 13 weeks of unemployment benefits and nothing else. The place shut its doors a month ago. Paid off 200 year old house. Paid off truck. Been living on savings for a year. Back, knees, and ability to stand more than 15 minutes without pain makes another job untenable at this point. Just hope the savings last till I can get Social Security.

Advice for young people: save, even if it’s $20 a week. Put it away and forget about it till you need to make investment decisions. Even if they’re CD’s one at a time or I bonds. Just keep putting money away you promise yourself you will not touch till necessary.

5) With difficulty especially now we are entering autumn and winter will soon be upon us. Heating will eat up any small amount of disposable income I get during the summer. Not heating at all isn't an option as the house will get damp and I will get more sick. I am disabled so live on disability benefits and I have no family to help so it's just me paying all the bills. Lucky to have cheap rent and a stable place to live and I am able to eat every day even if it's not the healthiest or a lot of variety so in a way I am blessed as it could be a lot worse.

6) Situation: I'm legally not allowed to work in the US until the government approves a post-graduation work permit, and the agency in charge of those things has become very bogged down as their primary focus has moved from paperwork to Soldier Of Fortune cosplay. When I could work I could only work on campus for the university, part-time but I was on a full-tuition fellowship, so I kind of broke even.

Anyway, it's a rough ride. I've been borrowing money from family friends to cover rent, my mom's been sending me money, people I know sometimes just V*nmo me a few bucks (one of the best was a former classmate who realized I had ordered pizza a few times for our group hangouts without anybody kicking in for it). I'm probably going to ask my family to loan me the money to expedite my work authorization even though it feels like a scam to have to pay for it; it was originally estimated at 2 to 4 months for processing but we're heading into 6 months now. (And the fee is a lot of money, more than I pay for a month's rent in a HCOL city.)

All of this is a big reason I'm on this sub, which has been great as I finally started using food pantries after learning more about them. I was always afraid my taking something would deprive someone else but I learned they often have more than enough, which is true in my experience. And even though I'm not allowed to work I've been doing some volunteering at a food distribution point (not the one I pick up from) which has been a really uplifting experience. My favorite part of the food pantries is the amount of produce they hand out, I had some apples last week that were amazing, and I've been making soup out of the onions and potatoes.

This sub helped me realize I should probably cut way down on my alcohol consumption, and be more careful at paying down my credit card debt without spending more money. I've been this poor/broke a few times and it's always super discouraging but having a forum for people in similar situations who are supportive and helpful is actually making it a much better experience this time and helps me to stay on track.

ETA to shoutout the excellent produce I received.

6) It’s really hard. I run a small errands business but it’s not doing well, and with 3 kids to care for it’s overwhelming. I even had to downgrade to a single room with $35 rent, but it’s still tough. Most days I just feel like a walking dead.

7) Bad. Real bad. Unemployment ran out this month and I can't file a new claim until the new year. I have one more month of money left. I can make it through October. Beyond that, I have nothing. I'm applying for jobs every day. I've gotten a few interviews, but nothing has come of them. I'm waitlisted on every delivery service app. I'm on Rover. I have two Etsy stores. Nothing. Zero money is coming in. No subscriptions, all expenses are as low as possible. I'm scared. It's never been this bad before. I have no family and no friends to fall back on.

Oh, and if I'm still unemployed by November, I lose my food stamps. Yay.

7) My friend is only surviving by talking to me. They want to end it.

8) I had a bit of a breakdown yesterday tbh. I was supposed to have help with vocational rehab in helping me get a job by now (they said I'd most likely start a job sometime in the fall) but they stopped replying to my phone calls or emails and haven't sent me any information in months. I'm especially pissed because I had to spend gas and bus money to get doctors appointments to get the paperwork filled out for vocational rehab and it's just been a giant waste of time. I failed multiple online tests while attempting to see if I could do transcription work and not a single one of the tests will tell me what questions I got wrong so I can't fix it. I even broke down and applied to Data Annotation but I've gotten no response so far and I'm worried I'm not gonna get one. Most of the tutoring work I've looked into want either a tutoring certificate (that I'd have to pay for) or need specifically a BA and I only have an Associate's. I'm two credits away from the English BA but I don't have the money to go back for one more class.

I tried to apply to be a taskr on TaskRabbit since I could definitely wait in lines for people but for some reason the app won't work either.

8) Managing the best I can. The past few years have not been the greatest for my wife and I. I was a system administrator that got pushed to a massive burnout that led to an accident resulting in a TBI, shattered hand, and herniated multiple discs in my spine. Lost my insurance and my wife makes just enough for us to not qualify for any assistance. I'm in constant pain due but doing any physical therapy I can that's free or available (walking, yoga, etc..) I canceled all our subscriptions, documenting every move we make to make sure we don't make same mistake twice (can't afford solutions to an avoidable mistake), and stretching out all types of food we can.

For example, we buy bag of popcorn chicken, rice, frozen stir fry veggies, orange chicken sauce, pasta and sauce, mash potatoes, gravy mix, and can corn. That's three meals.

Chicken parm - use some chicken with pasta and pasta sauce. KFC style bowl - mash potatoes, corn, chicken, and gravy Orange chicken - Chicken, rice, veggies, and the orange chicken sauce.

Not the healthy options but it helps keep the price down stretching certain things.

9) applying every day. down to my last $35 until i get work. mad stressed

10) feeling scared and sad and depressed but just have to hang in there and hope for the best.

11) Extremely bad i want to kill myself

12) To be honest it’s been really hard. The mental fatigue and the shame the pressure we put on ourselves is at times overwhelming. I’ve been unemployed for the past two years and wow. What a journey. But I’m still alive I have food, water and the basics I need to survive, all in all I truly am blessed. Partly to my country. But It’s Painful to make sacrifices and have to choose between things like gas, bills, food or rent etc. which one of these things take priority? Which one to I go without paying till next week. But somehow life goes on and we are still here again we can get through more hardships than we know

13) Soon people are going to start dying because they won't be able to survive anymore.

14) I'm not. But the thing I have to be proud of is I'm still here. I didn't realize you'd lose people so quickly being broke. I mean I get it I got no money to do anything or eat and all I do is complain I wouldn't want to be around myself either. At the end of the day if I give up now I'll have no one to remember me nothing in my name nothing, it'll be like I've never even existed. No one will miss me no one here to remember me to think about. It does cut the deepest of wounds. It's like I'm already a ghost and I hate it.

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