Back to Job Hunt After Sharing State of the Union Spotlight

WASHINGTON â€" For a brief moment last week, at the request of the White House, Misty DeMars was the face of long-term unemployment in the United States. The attention has not led to any job offers, not yet at least, but she is hopeful. “I think I can boost my résumé by adding that I wrote part of the State of the Union 2014,” Ms. DeMars, 37, said wryly.

She sat next to Michelle Obama at President Obama’s State of the Union address, as the president described Ms. DeMars’s all-too-familiar situation.

At the end of last May, Ms. DeMars, the mother of two young sons, lost her job at a Chicago-area planetarium, just after she and her husband had taken out a mortgage on a new house. While she received unemployment benefits, Ms. DeMars searched for a new position, preferably with a nonprofit group. But the recession has battered such organizations. And given the cost of the full-time child care necessary for her to stay on the job - $500 a week - she felt she could not accept just any job.

At the end of December, she was among the 1.3 million workers who lost their federally financed unemployment benefits. “We just keep plotting our lives out in shorter and shorter durations,” Ms. DeMars said. “My husband and I are trying to juggle the best we can, but resources are finite. We don’t have a private safety net.”

“We see that cliff. It’s looming,” she added. “And we’re trying not to go over.”

About four million Americans, including Ms. DeMars, count themselves among the long-term unemployed. With the fierce competition for jobs and the economy still performing below its potential, many Democrats and some Republicans have pushed to reinstate a federal emergency program that provided additional weeks of jobless benefits â€" a policy that Mr. Obama pushed in his State of the Union address. There appears little chance that the benefits will be extended.

When her benefits expired, Ms. DeMars wrote Mr. Obama a letter describing her experiences. To her surprise, an aide called her back. “He wanted you to know that he heard you,” the aide said, referring to the president. Then the White House asked her to be a guest at the State of the Union speech and to let Mr. Obama share her experiences.

“It was completely shocking - I think I blanked out,” Ms. DeMars said. “It was terrifying to get the phone call, because I knew I’d be in the spotlight for what is a very personal experience. When the president calls, you answer.”

The trip was a blur, she said. She and her husband left Chicago during a storm that left much of the country frozen solid. After two canceled flights, they finally made it to Washington to meet with Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and Mrs. Obama.

“I expected the whole experience to be quite formal with the first lady,” Ms. DeMars said. “She opened her arms for the biggest hug â€" a warm, caring hug, a genuine hug.”

After watching the State of the Union speech from inside the Capitol, she met briefly with Mr. Obama himself. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I heard you,’ ” she said.

Now back in Chicago, she is still searching for a job against tough odds. “Before I lost my job, I was in the position of reviewing applications,” she said. “We’d get 300-plus applications for every entry-level job I was posting. I knew exactly what I was up against.”

Ms. DeMars said she did go home to a deluge of phone calls and emails that she has been sifting through. One prospective employer, she said, mentioned Ms. DeMars’s television appearance.