Mr. Eller had been a senior director at Sprint, earning as much as $150,000 a year and overseeing 7,000 employees at 13 call centers, before being laid off in 2002 amid the economic contraction after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks。

　　A year later, he found another job, at roughly half the pay, managing a call center in New Jersey. After he lost that job two years later in a downsizing, Mr. Eller found himself out of work for another year before landing a contract position running two call centers in Kansas and Illinois, earning close to six figures。

　　But after that ended a year later, he was unable to find work for several months. In July 2007, he took what he thought would be a temporary job for $10 an hour as a baker in a grocery store. He was laid off again last October。

　　Mr. Eller quickly landed a new survival job, working as a supervisor on the overnight shift for a contractor processing immigration applications for the federal government at a salary of about $34,000 a year. But with eight children and a wife to support, Mr. Eller said he was still “below poverty level。” The family has not been able to make mortgage payments in five months and has been on the brink of foreclosure。

　　“I’m still scratching and clawing and trying to work my way back,” he said。

　　In Mr. Cooper’s case, relying on unemployment checks was never a serious consideration. The maximum benefit that jobless people can collect in Arizona is $240 a week, among the lowest in the country — and much less than is required to cover the mortgage on the comfortable four-bedroom home in Glendale that he and his wife, Maggie Macias-Cooper, share。

　　Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who works as a personal trainer in a gym built in what used to be the couple’s three-car garage, has seen her client base shrink to 10 from about 50 over the last year。

　　In addition to giving Mr. Cooper a job as a janitor, his friend agreed to pay for the couple’s benefits through Cobra. Maintaining health care coverage was paramount for the family because Mrs. Macias-Cooper recently had breast cancer。

　　Some unemployed professionals said they decided not to seek even part-time work because it might interfere with their job searches. But Mr. Cooper rises every day at 4 a.m. and, after a time of prayer, devotes two hours to his job hunt on the computer. He prints out a detailed call list of prospective employers to take with him, squeezing in phone conversations during breaks throughout the day from his pickup truck, which he calls his “office。”

　　“There were times I broke down,” Mr. Cooper said. “I broke down thinking, ‘This is what I’ve become.’ ”

　　But Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who admitted that she was initially embarrassed about her husband’s new job, says she is now grateful。

　　“There is no shame,” said Mrs. Macias-Cooper, who grew teary during an interview at their home. “I am very proud of my husband that he will go to any lengths, do whatever it takes, to keep his family afloat, if it means mopping floors, cleaning urinals。”