Down But Not Out Celebrates the Love Of America’s Unemployed

WhileTumblr generally situates itself more on the side of silly than solemn, a new page is providing some heartbreaking yet inspiring material.

By Bryan Gerhart Jul 19, 2011

Between embarrassing (but adorable) relics from your childhood and good excuses to shake your head and roll your eyes, Tumblr’s a fantastic home for aggregating just about anything these days. And while the blogging service generally situates itself more on the side of silly than solemn, a new page is providing some heartbreaking yet inspiring material.

Down But Not Out collects the stories of some of the 6.3 million people who have been out of work for more than six months. When, at the end of June, Yahoo! News posted a piece looking for narratives from this demographic, between emails and comments they were met with more than 6,000 responses. A number of these have been posted on the website, which aims to "put faces to statistics that can grow abstract and numbing as the country wrestles with the scourge of joblessness."

While many of the stories are gut-wrenching accounts, and optimism is often overwhelmed, there’s a common thread of resilience. Times are tough, but humans are tougher.

Got your own stories about unemployment? Share them in the comments section below.

We’re ending the day as often as possible by celebrating love. We welcome your ideas for posts. Send suggestions to [email protected], and be sure to put Celebrate Love in the subject line. You can send links to videos, graphics, photos, quotes, whatever. Or just chime in to the comments below and we’ll find you. Be sure to let us know you’ve got the rights to share any media you send.

To see other Love posts visit our Celebrate Love page.