When 42-year-old Jacob Trigg lost his job as a project manager in the tech industry he didn't think it would take too long to find a new one - he always had before.
But more than 2,000 job applications later he is still hunting, trying to make ends meet with jobs in package delivery and landscaping.
"It's a huge surprise because I've always been able to get a job very easily," said Trigg, who lives in Texas. "It wasn't even on my radar to be prepared for more than six months of unemployment. It wasn't in my universe."
His difficulties are an indication of a wider freeze in the US labour market, where job openings and hiring rates have dropped to multi-year lows.
Last year the US added an average of just 15,000 jobs a month, very few by historic standards.
