Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Juan and Bobbie Wilson, with daughter Neylah, have been getting by on temporary jobs. They are investing in college technology courses for Juan in the hope that it will lead to something permanent. Rick Rose, right, was earning $85,000 a year when he lost his job in the spring of last year. (Photos By (Left) Mark Gail And (Right) Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)

Long-term unemployment can work on a man's nerves.

Being rejected time and time again can rob anyone of self-esteem, but for many this recession has hit particularly hard.

That's certainly the case with Juan Wilson. He and his wife, Bobbie, are participating in this year's Color of Money Challenge.

Since the first of the year, I've been working with Juan and Bobbie as they search for employment. Typically, participants have a goal of getting out of debt, saving, and developing better money-management skills. This time, I specifically wanted to help people who had lost their jobs.

Bobbie has landed a number of jobs, although her latest is only a temporary position as a paralegal. Her contract was scheduled to end in October but has been extended to Dec. 31.

I've also been working with another challenger, Rick Rose, who lost his $85,000-a-year job in May 2008.

Unemployment has reached 9.7 percent nationwide, with many experts saying it will soon hit 10 percent. Delve more into the statistics and it's already a bleak picture for men, especially black men such as Wilson.

"It's hard to stay motivated," Wilson said.

The same has been true for Rose.

"My lowest point was at the end of 2008," he said. "My resources were starting to run thin. I thought my unemployment was going to run out. The job market was particularly bleak at that point. I didn't have any leads or responses to openings."

Juan Wilson is at his lowest point now. He lost his job at a semiconductor company in 2008. He's sent out countless résumés and gone on many job interviews. He managed to get some part-time work, but that was temporary.

"Since the Great Recession began in December 2007, there has been a sharp rise in the number of married couples where a woman is left to bring home the bacon because her husband is unemployed," Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, wrote in a recent report.

Boushey notes in "Women Breadwinners, Men Unemployed" that because men have lost three out of every four jobs that have been cut nationwide, more married couples must rely on the woman as the principal wage earner.

The unemployment rate for men over age 20 is already at 10.1 percent. For black men, it's a staggering 17 percent. That's compared with 7.6 percent for women of all races.

As of July, 15.6 percent of working wives had husbands who were not on the job, up a stunning 3.5 percentage points from early 2007, when 12.1 percent of working wives had unemployed husbands. In the recession, many families have struggled with unemployment of both husband and wife, Boushey said in her report.

And what kind of strain does that put on a marriage?

You probably already knew.

"There have been some days when I thought we wouldn't make it," Bobbie said. "It's been extremely frustrating and crazy. We argue a lot over finances."

"We are definitely fighting more," Juan said.

It's been difficult for Bobbie -- and me -- to get Juan to work on managing what little money they have coming in.

"It's just hard when you are the one with no income," he said.

Juan hopes things will turn around now that he's signed up for a series of technology courses at a community college. The training will help prepare him for to become a Cisco Certified Network Associate.

"The Cisco Networking Academy enables individuals like Juan Wilson to obtain jobs involving a broad spectrum of IT and networking equipment, not just Cisco's," said Carroll McGillin, a Cisco spokeswoman. "Skills and knowledge from such programs are in high demand despite the distressed economy as today nearly every new network requires new experts to design, build and maintain the collaborative infrastructure highway that the public and private sector both depend on."

McGillin said employment rates for those who graduate from the program vary, but people who achieve IT certification are often "fast-tracked" to employment and receive higher pay than those who do not hold certifications.

It's that hope of getting a job fast that led the Wilsons to scrape together the $644 in cash for the tuition and fees for the first course.

"Hopefully, I'll benefit from this training," Wilson said.

The waiting and the doubting are over for Rick Rose.

After 15 months of unemployment, he's back to work. He was hired in August as marketing and communications manager for a new partnership between the Brookings Institution and the John M. Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

"It was a pretty tough process," said Jackson Nickerson, director of the Brookings-Olin partnership. "Rick had the maturity, good communication skills and on top of that great marketing skills." Rose said having a job makes him feel normal again.

"Having an interesting, motivating job is a great reason to get up in the morning," he said.

There is a bit of down news along with this great news.

Rick had to take a huge pay cut. He's now making $50,000 a year.

"I guess I could look at it as 41 percent cut, but I choose to look at it as a 100 percent increase from no income," Rose said. "It is going to be an adjustment, I know. But I see this as a foot in the door. There is a lot of room for growth. I don't see it as a setback at all."