The economic slump so many people suffered through originated in the United States, with a regulatory failure of mortgages rated less risky than they turned out to be. As large numbers of homeowners proved unable to repay their loans, the companies that had the oversight and those that owned the loans (as well as their subsidiaries and their shareholders) lost sizable amounts of money. The effects of these drastic losses soon spiraled into the US job market as layoffs and terminations. The rebound was slow in coming. Many people experienced long months of struggles just like the character in this story.

Facing tenant eviction after several months of unpaid rent, Sue Johnson packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door automobile and drove out of town.

She wound up at a motel, putting down the $26she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set. It was all the money Sue had left after her unemployment benefits had expired. She faced life as a migrant, a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long before, had held a corporate job in a large metropolitan city and was enrolled in a graduate business school.

Sue knew that in all likelihood, she would end up living in her car. She was part of a hard-luck group of jobless people who called themselves "99ers," because they had exhausted the maximum 9weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they could claim.

Long-term unemployment was at record levels, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Modest payments of unemployment benefits were a lifeline that enabled people who were out-of-work to maintain at least an appearance of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting gas in their cars, paying electric and phone bills.