It's cold in Donna Oxford's house, despite a sheet of plastic taped over the front door to block the wind howling up the hill toward her modest rancher outside Coatesville.

Vincent Tricome's home is chilly, too - maybe it would be better, he thinks, sick at heart, if he moved back with his parents and rented out his townhouse tucked into a cul-de-sac in Chester Springs.

When Soo Hwan Lee's wife is away on business, he turns the heat way down in his South Philadelphia rowhouse.

Wear a sweater when you visit Khaleel Adger's Victorian in Germantown, or a winter jacket at Ashton Jones' rowhouse rehab on the edge of West Philadelphia's newly gentrified sections.

That's what it is to be among the long-term unemployed: The cold is a given, along with diminished expectations, trampled spirits, and fading prospects.

It has been three years since the Great Recession began in December 2007. Even though the recession is technically over, the U.S. economy remains caught in its jaws, unable to break clear when so many have been out of work for so long.

The average length of unemployment topped 34 weeks in 2010. That was the longest average since the Labor Department started keeping records in 1948.

Long-term unemployment beat another distressing record last year: The percentage of the unemployed who were out of work for more than six months rose to a staggering 45.6 percent.

And in one 2010 study, more than a third of the people who were unemployed had been out of work for more than two years.

It has gotten so bad that the Labor Department, starting this year, will begin to capture these data as part of its monthly reporting series.

The department reported Friday that December's unemployment rate had fallen to 9.4 percent from 9.8 percent, with 103,000 jobs created in the month.

That was the good news. The bad news was further down in the report - lengthening, intractable unemployment; more discouraged workers; and more people dropping out of the workforce.

Sometimes Tricome, 48, wonders if anyone will ever want him again, a man with a master's degree, two decades of civil-engineering experience, and a love of seeing things built.

"It can't go on forever, but I can't see any end to it," said Tricome, out of engineering work since July 2008.

This jobless crisis is particularly frightening to Carl Van Horn, a public-policy professor at Rutgers University and coauthor of a December study titled "The Shattered American Dream: Unemployed Workers Lose Ground, Hope, and Faith in Their Futures."

"One of the problems that will occur in this political environment is that people are desperate for good news," Van Horn said. "There's no good news if you are unemployed for two years, and a lot of people are going to remain in there."

If the recession has proved anything, it is that few are immune from joblessness. Three out of four people, Van Horn said, have been unemployed or have a family member or close friend who lost a job.

"This a broad societal experience," he said.

The unemployed are young, old, and all races, genders, and professions. Although unemployment is higher in the city, the wealthiest suburbs have not been spared, nor have the college-educated and the professional class.

"Forget about compassion," Van Horn said. "Even if you are not compassionate, you still need to be worried because all those unemployed people are still there. This is a big, heavy weight on the national economy."

Senior economist Robert Dye at PNC Financial Services explained:

From the time the recession began in December 2007 until it bottomed out in December 2009, nearly 8.4 million jobs were lost.

"If we had those 8.4 million people in the labor force, consumer spending would be robust and stronger than it is now," Dye said. "That is such a big part of the economy, accounting for a third of gross domestic product.

"Right there, that would be significant. With a fully functioning labor market, the housing market would recover, and we'd feel the positive health effect of that.

"Getting these people back in the market would have multiple positive effects on the economy."