Those who have been fired or let go from their jobs “account for about half the unemployed,” says Walden, a professor with the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and specialist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service.

“Ten percent are new workers who are just starting looking for jobs. Another 10 percent are people who have voluntarily left their jobs,” he adds. “And then the rest -- about 30 percent -- are people who have had a job in the past, they dropped out of the labor force -- maybe a woman to have a child or for some other reason -- and now they have come back in the labor force and are looking for work again.

“So the types of people who are unemployed are really ... complex.”