by Calculated Risk on 9/06/2009 08:34:00 PM

Laura Conaway at NPR Money highlights a new survey by the Rutgers University John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development.

From the Press Release:

A comprehensive national survey conducted among 1,200 Americans nationwide who have been unemployed and looking for a job in the past 12 months, including 894 who are still jobless, portrays a shaken, traumatized people coping with serious financial and psychological effects from an economic downturn of epic proportion.
...
The survey shows that the great recession of 2007-2009 may have long-lasting financial and psychological effects on millions of people, and therefore on the nation’s social fabric. Two thirds of respondents say they are depressed, over half have borrowed money from friends or relatives, and a quarter have skipped mortgage or rent payments. ...

More than half of the jobless think the changes in the economy will be fundamental and lasting, and when the unemployed are asked when the economy will recover, only 20% believe it will do so in the next year.

Here are the raw comments and stats from the survey.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

From the report:

Over half of the unemployed have lost their jobs for the first time ... Job loss is hitting more affluent workers and educated professionals hard — a metric of the recession’s seismic impact. More than one in four of those who were unemployed for the first time earned $75,000 or more in their previous job; one in four first-time unemployed workers have at least a four-year college degree.