DON PECK: “I would really encourage people, particularly if they’re living in highly depressed places, to consider taking a leap and moving to a more dynamic region. I think that will help them in the long run.”

A willingness to move helped Jessie Way find a job. Her new job is more than an hour from where she was living. But she did not have time to find an apartment, so she is sleeping on a friend’s couch until she can find a place of her own.

(MUSIC)

FAITH LAPIDUS: Thirty-nine-year-old Norm Elrod of Queens, New York, has been laid off from jobs four times in the past ten years. The last job he lost was with an online marketing agency. He left in two thousand eight. After that, he says, he set out to find a way to make himself a better job candidate. He used online resources to create a website and teach himself new skills in the process.

NORM ELROD: “That’s how my website came about. I built that and ran it and essentially trained myself, or re-trained myself, taught myself new skills that allowed me to get the job I have now.”

DOUG JOHNSON: Norm Elrod created a blog called Jobless and Less: The Blog for the Employmentally Challenged.

NORM ELROD: “I wrote about the one thing I seemed to know, which was at that point being unemployed. [Laughs]"

FAITH LAPIDUS: Jessie found her job by answering an online job posting. But Norm says he had no success applying for jobs on the Internet.