Down But Not Out: ‘I’ve been told I’m not a good candidate because they feel someone with my experience will bolt at the first opportunity’

In June, we asked you for your stories spelling out what it's like to be out of work for an extended period. The thousands of anecdotes you sent us offer a heart-rending glimpse of how Americans are coping with long-term joblessness during the Great Recession and its aftermath. The responses The Lookout has collected from Yahoo readers offer a portrait of out-of-work people who are smart, articulate, motivated and resilient--a useful corrective to some of the negative stereotypes that too often shape perceptions of this huge group of Americans.

We posted excerpts from many of the stories, as well as unveiling a separate site that houses even more. But the stories have continued to pour in, so we plan to keep sharing more.

Below is Patrick C.'s story; you can read more accounts at our Tumblr site for this crowd-sourcing project, Down But Not Out:

At first I wasn't too worried, as I've never had trouble getting a job, and have a bachelor's degree in business administration, with a major in finance. After a few months it became apparent to me that jobs were disappearing at an alarming rate.

In my case, having been working in financial services, and having my career tied to the credit markets was especially impactful. The bank I was working for, as well as other financial institutions which contributed heavily to the bursting bubble and deep recession we are (in my opinion) still experiencing, regardless of what the economic data says, have held it against me that I've had such a long job gap. Which is something you don't read about, and nobody is talking about.

You have people working in sectors that really haven't been affected, and are pretty clueless about what has really been going on. Understandable, but it's like hearing about an event in another country … "Oh man, that's too bad."

You can keep reading Patrick's story here.