When Will Thomas first got laid off last September, part of him felt relieved.
He had been doing business development at a tech start up trying to make public benefits easier to access and administer, and it just wasn’t a great fit for him. But he was very aware it wasn’t a great time to be job searching, especially for policy jobs in Washington, D.C.
“I knew that this was going to be a long and tough road,” Thomas said. He figured maybe it would take him six or eight months to find a new job in his field, food and nutrition policy.
But the reality “has been far worse than my expectations,” he said.
Almost a year later, he is still looking for a job.
“Lately, it has largely felt like screaming into the void,” Thomas said. “I've been a finalist for roles three different times.”
But never the finalist. At least, not yet.
Thomas is now one of the 1.8 million people officially considered long-term unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, meaning they’ve been out of work and actively looking for a job for longer than six months. Some for much longer — though past 27 weeks, the BLS doesn’t track how long.
And unemployment benefits, meanwhile, only last about 26 weeks — and that’s in the more generous states. In some, they run out after 12. | 
