When Will Thomas first got laid off last September, part of him felt relieved. He had been doing business development at a tech start up trying to make public benefits easier to access and administer, and it just wasn’t a great fit for him. But he was very aware it wasn’t a great time to be job searching, especially for policy jobs in Washington, D.C.“I knew that this was going to be a long and tough road,” Thomas said. But by long and tough road, Thomas figured maybe it would take him six or eight months to find a new job in his field, food and nutrition policy.The reality “has been far worse than my expectations,” he said.Almost a year later, he is still looking for a job.“Lately, it has largely felt like screaming into the void,” he said. “I've been a finalist for roles three different times.”But never the finalist. At least, not yet. Thomas is now one of the 1.8 million people officially considered long-term unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, meaning they’ve been out of work and actively looking for a job for longer than six months. Some for much longer — though past 27 weeks, the BLS doesn’t track how long. A quarter of those who are out of work now fall into this category. Unemployment benefits, meanwhile, only last about 26 weeks — and that’s in the more generous states. In some, they run out after 12 weeks.“We are at a kind of historic position in terms of how many people are long-term unemployed, unemployed for economic reasons, unemployed in particular demographics,” said Michele Evermore, a senior fellow at the National Employment Law Project. In addition to those who officially count as long-term unemployed, there’s a growing number of people who are considered to have dropped out of the labor force even though they would still like to be working.“Between all of these numbers — people who are discouraged from looking, people who've dropped out of the labor force, people who are part-time for economic reasons — you're seeing a huge section of the labor force that's not where they want to be,” Evermore said. That can have a lasting, negative impact, both on those people and on the economy. Catherine Maddux is acutely aware of that. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and she’s been out of work since April of last year. Just four days before she was set to start a communications job at the Department of Homeland Security, she got a call and an email all at once telling her the job had been rescinded.“I said, ‘I just left my job,’” Maddux said. “‘I'm not married. I don't have any insurance.’ And they're like, ‘sorry.’” She knew the job market was rough, but she also didn’t see the point in dwelling on her bad luck. She thought she would be able to figure it out soon enough.“I know how to do this — I'm a hustler, and I'll get a job quickly,” she said. “Maybe it'll take four months, six months.” But four months passed with no job offers, beyond some freelance gigs here and there. Then six. Then her unemployment benefits ran out. Eventually, Maddux decided it was time to apply for a part-time job at an Aldi supermarket to make some money. She didn’t get a call for that, either.“I had some savings — not a lot — and I have raided my 401(k) four times,” she said. “It's been miserable.” It’s now been almost a year and a half, and she’s still out of work. “When I got to a year, I have to tell you, they really need to add that into unemployment numbers,” she said. “There is something that happens to you mentally after a year where you're like, there's no job for me.” To stay sane, she’s been volunteering at a food pantry. Going to the gym. Trying to get out of the house and out of her head. “I try not to think about the fact that when I do get to retirement, that this could have a really, really long-term effect on my later years,” Maddux said. “I understand that. I understand that I may not recover from this.”Though she still hopes she will. Just across the river in D.C., Will Thomas is just about to hit the one year mark, which he can’t quite believe. He’s surviving by working a few nights a week as a bouncer at his neighborhood gay bar, a job he picked up about a month after he got laid off. “I was a regular there — it's two blocks away from my house,” he said. “I knew they needed someone, and I knew I needed a job at least part-time.” He needed to work to help pay at least some of his bills and to meet the work requirements for SNAP. Soon, he’ll need those hours to keep his Medicaid, too. Working part-time has also helped Thomas extend his unemployment benefits long past 26 weeks, when they otherwise would’ve run out. He only gets about $100 or $200 a week from unemployment because of the hours he’s putting in at the bar.“But that's still money I can throw at my landlord,” Thomas said. “That's still money I can throw towards other bills. That's still money coming in the door that wouldn't otherwise, and so that's been really helpful.”But even with that, plus the bouncer job, the occasional contract gig, and some help from his church, Thomas is still a little behind on rent — and he’s just really ready to be working full time in nutrition and food policy again, getting the kind of paycheck he was used to. “You want to be like, ‘OK, put me in coach,’” he said. “I don't care who the coach is. I just want to be on the team again.”