After working for eight and a half years at IBM, Nancy Ikeda, 55, lost her job 13 months ago. She had lived in Binghamton, N.Y., since her daughters were in high school, but after spending most of the year looking in vain for another job, Ikeda decided she couldn’t stay any longer.

“There’s just nothing” in Binghamton, she says, because the major employers aren’t hiring. Ikeda had watched people being laid off at IBM during the time she worked there. “They sent the entire department overseas,” she says, “and finally got to me.” The company’s workforce was reduced from over 4,000 in 2002 to 1,300 when Ikeda lost her job in February of 2009.  “Lockheed Martin laid off a quarter of their people, and SUNY Binghamton had a hiring freeze.”

The entire job market is shrinking. From the 1950s to the 1970s, jobs in the private sector increased about 3.5 percent annually, but the last ten years witnessed a meager growth of 0.9 percent per year. As a result, millions of middle-class workers left jobless for six months and longer are becoming what New York Times writer Peter Goodman calls the “new poor”—people who enjoyed a comfortable life but are now dependent on public services. Many may never recover their previous status.

Unskilled workers undoubtedly have the hardest time finding jobs today: many of the manufacturing jobs that fueled the engine of prosperity in the decades following World War II no longer exist in the U.S.: they have moved to Asia and Latin America. Unions have grown weaker and so are no longer able to protect workers as they once did. The corporate focus on the bottom line mandates efficiency at the expense of workers: whenever possible, expensive manpower is replaced by machinery, and even white-collar work is moved overseas, where wages are lower. In the past decade alone, 5.6 million manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation, Goodman reports.

But Ikeda has an M.B.A. “You’d think I’d be employable,” she says.

You’d think—but Ikeda belongs to the cohort of women 45 to 64 years old, and they have been hit particularly hard in this recession.

The Department of Labor reports that in the last severe recession of 1983, this group comprised 7 percent of people who were unemployed six months or longer. Last year, however, that figure doubled to 14 percent. Professionals are hardly better off than their sisters with lesser skills. In fact, a recent study by the nonprofit research organization Catalyst found that not only did women MBAs  frequently start out at lower pay levels than similarly qualified male colleagues, but their career trajectories and compensation still had not caught up years later.

To make matters worse, recovery from recessions is taking longer and longer. An analysis of data from the Department of Labor shows that jobs lost before 1990 were regained within 21 months, but after the 1990 slump, recovery took 31 months, and almost four years passed before the jobs lost in 2001 were recovered. Yet in his widely discussed piece in The Atlantic, Don Peck argues that that last statistic is deceptive, because the percentage of the population that is working hasn’t returned to what it was before 2001 (since there are fewer jobs available).

Peck probes the destructive and lasting effects of pervasive joblessness on American society. The average time a person remains unemployed is now over six months, the longest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began recording the data. Peck’s extensive research leads him to conclude that the Great Recession will not only contribute to personal misery through the loss of self-esteem, which leads to depression, domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse, but will rend the social fabric as divorce and crime rates climb as a result.

The statistics are depressing to read; they are devastating to experience personally.

After months of futilely looking for work, Nancy Ikeda sold her house in October, put the contents in storage, packed her two cats into the car and drove to New York City in hopes of finding more opportunities for employment. She moved in with her older daughter, Margaret, who is 27, single, and lives in a tiny studio apartment in Staten Island. (Ikeda represents the flip side of a trend: 10 percent of young adults have had to move back with their parents, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.)

“My daughter is okay with me living with her,” says Ikeda, but “I don’t know how long it’s going to last. It gets a little crowded. It’s a little bit tight.” Ikeda sleeps on the kitchen floor on some mats. “I have a delightful bed in that storage unit I would love to sleep in some day. It’s a queen-sized bed,” she says wistfully. “I can live on unemployment and actually help her out a little with her rent. So it frees up some of her money. Financially, I can make it on almost nothing if I live with her.”

Accustomed to a particular accounting software, Ikeda has found that a company using a similar program doesn’t have to hire someone like her—who needs just a bit of training to adjust to the new system—because there are so many people applying who are already fully familiar with it. For the time being, she has a temporary job with the Census Bureau. It pays well enough, but at best, it will last only until September, and there are no benefits.

Like unemployment, lack of health insurance is a problem that many women over 45 are facing, as we noted last week. “My huge worry is that my COBRA runs out in August. I’m not destitute. I have money in the bank. I’ve saved money all my life,” says Ikeda. “I’m terrified if I don’t have health insurance that something will happen. I’ll lose my life savings.” There’s no friends-and-neighbors backup for health insurance,  Ikeda added. “When I lost my job, everybody was saying, ‘You want a bag of groceries?’ They were trying to help me out. But nobody will say to me, ‘Oh, I’ll pick up $1,000 for your appendectomy.’” And Ikeda makes too much to qualify for the health insurance subsidized by New York State.

Ikeda also had to return her laptop to IBM when she left. Her younger daughter gave her an extra computer she wasn’t using, but that one’s in storage. Ikeda uses Margaret’s computer while her daughter’s at work, but when she returns, it’s a battle: “she’s a computer nut too—she’d want to be on the computer.” Ikeda hasn’t taken the other computer out of storage because there’s no room for a desk in the studio apartment.

“At some point, if I were to get a real job,” Ikeda dreams, “maybe we’ll get a two-bedroom together. But that hasn’t happened yet, and with the census job ending in September, I can’t risk moving right now.”

Margaret is enjoying her mother’s stay, and is even reaping some benefits. “She’s a huge help with cooking and apartment chores,” she says. “I’m kind of a slob,” she acknowledges, “so it’s good for me.” After years of living on her own, Margaret doesn’t mind letting her mother know when she’ll be home. “It’s kind of comforting to have that backup,” and to find dinner ready when she comes home. “So my life’s changed, but not as much as it would be if I had to pack up and move home if I couldn’t find a job.”

Although both women are making the best of a difficult situation, there have been rough spots. Margaret remembers when her mother was “really stressed” when she was selling the house and not able to find a job. “That really bummed me out, because that’s very not like her. She’s very go-getting, super-optimistic. The job’s a big part of her life. She’s always been very proud of her work.” Margaret’s very happy that her mother is taking paralegal classes on a grant from the unemployment office. “She’s much more herself doing that, being engaged. She’s not the kind of person to be happy sitting at home watching afternoon TV.”

Ikeda admits that she’s succumbed at times: “You go through periods when you get depressed. You don’t bother looking, and then you get going again.” Job-hunting can be demoralizing. “There’s very little feedback, and it’s very lonely. It’s you and the computer, basically. There’s plenty of other people in the same situation,” she knows, “but still, it’s a solitary effort. You don’t walk— there’s no door-to-door any more. It’s totally done by computer.”

At least until September, life for Nancy Ikeda has regained a certain regularity. She can enjoy playing Scrabble with Margaret, explore the Big Apple, and send out résumés with just a little less anxiety. And like many in her over-40 cohort in the job market, hope that the economy picks up in the meantime.

Trained as a medievalist, Diane Vacca taught medieval literature, Spanish and Italian at several universities before becoming a journalist with specialties in politics, the arts and New York City. Her work can also be found at ComedyBeat.com and the New York City biweekly Chelsea Now, where she covers everything from education and public housing to landmark designation and the arts.