Most of us know Gaylene Adams only as a number.
We read about her again on Friday, when the federal government churned out another monthly employment report that served to highlight the anemic state of the U.S. economy.
For Adams, Labor Day will mark 671 days of trying to find work.
That makes her one of 14 million Americans unemployed but still looking for a job; one of 6 million people who have been looking for at least six months, and one of 4.5 million who have been job hunting for a year or more -- a figure unprecedented since World War II.
But all those numbers tell only part of Adams' story. They can't calculate the shock of losing a job for the first time in your life. They can't measure the panic, fear and despair of watching the erosion of a hard-won standard of living.
Adams, who turns 42 this month, lives in east Bloomington with her husband, who is a company driver for a transportation service, and their two elementary-school-age children. They bought their house in 2006.
Adams has a bachelor's degree in social work. She has worked at nonprofit social service agencies for most of her life. Her last job, as a program manager for a Minneapolis nonprofit that provides mentoring services for troubled youth, ended on Nov. 3, 2009. Her salary, about $37,000 a year, represented nearly half of her family's income.
"There was no question about me not working," Adams said. "And the economy was getting better at the time so I really didn't think it would be hard to find something else."