J.R. Childress is up before the sun, bustling about in the French colonial brick house he built. He helps pack his wife’s lunch, downs some eggs or cereal for breakfast, pores over online and newspaper job listings and hopes – even prays – this will be the day when his fortunes turn around.

He’s determined to stay busy, job or no job, for sanity’s sake. Maybe he’ll help a neighbor. Exercise. Or check out computer blueprints of construction projects around Winston-Salem, N.C., to stay connected to the world where he thrived for three decades.

Childress has been laid off twice since late 2009, most recently for 10 months.

“Every day is a struggle,” he says in a soft drawl. “The struggle is the unknown. You’ve worked your way up the ladder and you get to a point in life and a position in work where you’re comfortable ... then all of a sudden everything goes away. It’s like being thrown into a hole and you’re climbing to get up, but it’s greased. There’s no way of getting out.”

The frustrations of one 53-year-old North Carolina man are multiplied millions of times over across time zones and generations in a country still gripped by economic anxiety, despite increasing signs of recovery. And they resound in a presidential campaign pitting President Obama against GOP opponents.

Unemployment in January was at its lowest level in three years – 8.3 percent – and 1.8 million jobs were added last year, compared with about 1 million in 2010. But there’s still a long way to go: There are 5.6 million fewer jobs than there were when the recession began in late 2007.

About 12.8 million people are out of work, and what’s especially troubling, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is the large number of long-term unemployed – more than 40 percent have been jobless more than six months.

The long-term unemployed don’t fit into any neat category. They’re young and old. They have high school diplomas and master’s degrees. Some become so discouraged, they stop looking for a time or become midlife college students. Others find temporary jobs, then return to the jobless rolls for long stretches. In 2011, the average length of being out of work was 39 weeks – about nine months.

But statistics tell only part of the story. They don’t gauge the despair of a thirtysomething office manager who has stopped counting how many résumés he’s sent out. Or the apprehension of a 60-ish tool-and-die maker who lost his job, returned to school, but still can’t find work – and doubts he ever will again.

Or the rejection J.R. Childress feels, declaring that unemployment “makes you feel you’re not a part of society because you’re not earning your way.”

Childress started working after high school, first in factories, then in construction, eventually earning a six-figure salary as vice president of operations at a company.

In October 2009, he was laid off when road construction and building projects came to a near halt. After a year without work, Childress took a huge pay cut to be a construction foreman, but that job ended last April. He’s convinced he has two strikes against him: his age and lack of college degree.

“I’m putting out résumés, but they’re going into a black hole,” he says. Prospective employees, he says “want 33, not 53. ... They say, ‘We really like you, but if we spend our time training you, when construction comes back, you’re going to leave.’ ” He pauses, and adds: “That’s not paying my bills.”

Childress’ wife works and their 24-year-old twins are out of college so that eases their financial burden, but he says he asks himself: “ ‘Am I going to be 75 or 80 and not be able to retire? ... What did I do to deserve this? When is it going to turn around for me?’ ”

Jobless 3 years

Jerome Greene doesn’t mince words when he describes life without a steady paycheck for more than three years.

“It’s been like hell,” he says. “It’s very hard to see people leave and go to work in the morning and come home every night. It’s hard to see people spending money, going out and having fun and you can’t. It’s very stressing. But there are people in worse situations than I have and I feel sorry for them.”

Greene, about to turn 50, worked for 16 years as an Oracle software developer, most recently at a Pennsylvania company that made electronic components for cars. When he was laid off in June 2008, the recession was just taking hold, and he still had job interviews. Greene hoped the downturn would be brief.

But the jobless rate hovered above 9 percent and Greene’s 99 weeks of unemployment expired. He had trouble sleeping. Depression set in.

At the same time, Greene, who is single and lives outside of Pottstown, Pa., has become an active social networker, online and in person. He participates in several groups, looking for job tips, perfecting his “elevator speech” – the 30-second pitch to prospective employers.

“Emotionally, it helps,” he says. “You see that you’re not alone.”

‘I worked hard’

Jon Creek, who lives in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, was a construction company office manager until he and almost everyone else at the firm were laid off in December 2007. Creek had known the business was in trouble and says he actually turned down another better-paying job earlier, out of loyalty.

It took 18 months to land part-time work as an insurance agent’s assistant at $240 a week – a dollar less than his unemployment checks.

A year later, Creek was stunned when a certified letter arrived with his final paycheck and notice that his job was over. Again, it was the economy. That was August 2010. Creek – who holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration – has been looking since, worried that as time passes, someone unemployed for, say, six months may seem more appealing.

“I worked hard. I did everything right,” says Creek, 35. “Now I’m at the point of asking myself, ‘Will I ever be able to get anything?’ It’s not just about a salary. It’s about being able to go out and say, ‘I do this. This is my identity.’ ”

His wife, Leslie, a financial analyst, is a constant comfort. “She tells me I’m smart, that I have a lot to offer,” he says.

Creek is considering returning to school this fall to get a master’s degree in accounting.

Back to school

When Ted Casper was laid off at a tractor-trailer plant in Wisconsin in spring 2009, he initially thought he’d rebound quickly. He was a skilled tool-and-die maker and had never been unemployed for more than a few days.

“I thought I’d spend a week filling out applications,” Casper says, “and I’d spend my next week deciding which of the three or four jobs I would take.”

He soon discovered he had misjudged. “It was a real eye-opening experience,” he says. “I started looking for work and no one was looking back.”

It wasn’t just that he had no prospects. His wife, Gail, had already lost her job at an auto dealership. And they were in the final stages of foreclosure, no longer able to make their $900 monthly mortgage payments. Their annual income had plummeted from $90,000 to $100,000 to about $23,000 – mostly his unemployment checks.

Casper, then in his late 50s, returned to school, enrolling at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, Wis.

Two years later, he had an associate degree in industrial engineering technology. But he was 60, and competition was fierce, with thousands of unemployed factory workers in the area, many from a recently shuttered General Motors plant. “I got zero responses,” says Casper, of Edgerton, Wis.

So last summer, Casper returned to Blackhawk to study business management.

“I kind of accepted the fact there’s no employer out there that will hire me,” he says wearily. He’d like to start a business – making furniture is a possibility.

Casper is philosophical about his fate.

“There are times when you realize a lot of this is my fault,” he says. “There were times when I was working and wasn’t saving. ... On one level, it feels like someone should be taking care of me. On the other level, I feel I should have been doing it on my own.”

He just received his first Social Security check, but still hopes for another career.

“If you can’t find a job,” he says, “maybe you’ve got to go out and create one. ... There’s always something ahead. You just have to reach out for it.”