Meet the 99ers: "I'm Scared"

This is the third of a five-part series focused on "the 99ers," people who've exhausted their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and still can't find work. Read the whole series here, here, here and here.

Susan Madrak's 99 weeks are up.

"I'm done. My last check was three weeks ago," she says about her unemployment benefits. She's got two months worth of savings in the bank, but after that, she says she's not sure what will happen.

"I'm scared," she said. "I have a couple of job leads I'm pursuing, but who knows? I don't really know what to do if none of this comes through."

Susan, who's 55 and lives in Philadelphia, has been pounding the pavement since 2008 when she was laid off from her sales job at a consulting business.

"I've looked everywhere," Susan said. "I have probably sent out 400 resumes in the last year and a half, two years. I've gotten one interview. One interview."

Although these last two years have been incredibly difficult, her saving grace has been her political blog — Suburban Guerilla — where she writes about the country, the economy and her own struggle to find work. Her readers have even pitched in when she's been in dire straits, paying $700 a month COBRA health insurance coverage for the first 18 months of her unemployment and chipping in for car repairs.

Some conservatives cling tight to the ludicrous notion that people on unemployment are enjoying themselves and refusing to look for work. One U.S. representative recently lamented that extending unemployment benefits is "creating hobos." Not so, says Susan.

She says it's been nearly impossible to find a job, and anything out there offers so little security that it's difficult to take a chance on it. If she takes a new job, but gets laid off before working there long enough to qualify for unemployment, it means she's out of luck.

"You have to make an educated guess," said Susan. "When you know the economy is falling down, you're not really interested in playing dice."

What angers her the most is the ambivalence of politicians in her own Democratic party.

"I am devastated by the fact that the party I have supported all my life is so utterly indifferent to the suffering of ordinary men and women," said Susan. "For the first time in my life, I don't even feel like voting."

While Congress has passed extensions for the current tiers of unemployment, almost no one is talking about adding another tier for people like herself who have exhausted all benefits.

"They had plenty of money to prop up Wall Street. They don't have enough money to help people who are struggling," she says.

With no help on the horizon, Susan wonders what the next few months have in store.

"I'm sitting here wondering how I'm going to pay my bills if this money runs out," she said. "I just don't know."