Jobless, his family home lost to foreclosure, Michael Wilkinson's choices boil down to hard and harder.

"With no paycheck or unemployment, paying the rent plus utilities each month has been such a struggle," Wilkinson wrote in an e-mail. "Now, with the holidays here, I struggle with giving the twins Christmas or paying rent."

In January, The Inquirer began a series of profiles of the unemployed - interviewing 100 people, 60 in 60 days in the newspaper and the rest weekly online at Philly.com.

Thirty-nine are still looking for work, and most of the 54 who found jobs now earn less or work part time. Seven could not be reached.

Together, their stories portray a middle class pushed to the precipice of poverty, with some falling over the edge and losing homes. One now lives with her boyfriend in a car parked outside a thrift store in Las Vegas.

"The only reason we are eating is because I still had some food stamps left. If it wasn't for that we would be starving right now," she wrote in an e-mail. Embarrassed, she asked that her name not be used.

Yet, she and the others cling courageously to thin threads of hope.

"We can't give up, not with 11-year-old twins," Wilkinson wrote from the family's new home, a Levittown rental not far from the home they lost to foreclosure.

"Our son is autistic. Santa Claus asked my son what he wanted for Christmas. He said, 'Please give my daddy a job and our house back.' "

In the midst of financial and emotional devastation, they keep faith through family, friends, or religion.

Their experiences are not rare - not when 13.3 million remain unemployed, and one in six Americans is either jobless, forced to work part time, or too discouraged to regularly look for work.

The people profiled by The Inquirer reflect the findings of research by such groups as the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University and the Pew Research Center.

The Rutgers study has tracked one group of unemployed people since 2008. In a recent update, only 30 percent describe their situation positively. The rest are either "downsized," "devastated," or "totally wrecked."

The hundred people profiled by The Inquirer are male and female, city dwellers and suburbanites, a mix of ages, races, and ethnic groups, but by no means a demographer's statistically balanced sample.

The group skews older, partly because the newspaper gave preference to those out of work the longest. Statistically, the long-term unemployed tend to be older, even though unemployment is higher among the young.

The average length of unemployment is nearly 41 weeks, the U.S. Labor Department reports.

Many profiled have been out of work much longer, drifting in and out of periodic employment, usually underemployment with lower pay, fewer benefits, and less security.

Just over a third of them - 39 - have full-time work or will soon begin a job. One started Wednesday, after a year of unemployment.

All but a handful have taken substantial pay cuts, usually 30 percent to 50 percent. Donna Hardy Johnston, a public-policy analyst, will start her job in February, working as a Vista staffer in Florida at a third of her former salary.

"Rents are inexpensive there," Johnston said.

Since being laid off in 2008, she had occasional work as a canvasser for advocacy groups. Her home in Lansdowne went into foreclosure, but at least, she said, the new job includes health insurance for herself and her husband.

Also earning less is Donna Oxford of Coatesville, who still has custody of her toddler grandson, now 3. Her poignant poem about joblessness prompted an outpouring of help and a job offer from Martha and Bernd Heinze, owners of Accolade Management L.L.C., which she accepted gratefully.

Even so, "I don't think I'm going to be able to save my house; foreclosure proceedings have begun," she wrote.

"I've given myself permission to focus on the holidays," she wrote, describing her grandson's love for Santa. "I have to coax him off his lap because he holds conversations with him. After four visits, I don't think he's told him what he wants for Christmas."

Many now hold temporary positions, a growing trend as nervous employers will not fully commit themselves to rehiring in a shaky economy.