San Jose, CA – In May, the unemployment rate rose to 6.1%, the highest level in nine years. Businesses have cut more than two and a half million jobs since the recession began in March of 2001. This drop in jobs is the longest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. With so many of us out of work, it is taking longer and longer for the unemployed to find jobs. It now takes an average of almost five months to find work, the longest period of time in almost twenty years.