Janet Raiffa looks forward to opening her mailbox each morning, just to have something to do.

“Sometimes checking the mail is the highlight of my day,” she said.

Raiffa, an Ivy-league graduate, was director of recruiting at Goldman Sachs and most recently at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, before being laid off in March. The 40- year-old, who used to receive a six-figure salary, has been unemployed for nine months now. She has applied to full-time jobs in recruiting, but with her extensive experience and salary history, she is overqualified and overpriced for the few jobs available.

Remaining active through short-term jobs has been a way to pay her bills and avoid feeling the loneliness affiliated with unemployment. But sometimes she has difficulty facing the fact that she is alone at home. She is single, her parents deceased. Most of her friends and acquaintances were made through her jobs. Many work or are now looking for jobs as well.

“Your boss is like your surrogate father or mother, and the people who report to you are like your children,” she said. “It’s strange when you wake up in the morning and you have nowhere to report to . . . It’s like, ‘nobody wants me.’”

The dismal unemployment statistics in the U.S. do not reveal the stories of anger, depression, nervousness and stress that affect individuals like her. Having to constantly reach out to friends is an odd feeling, Raiffa said, and when they cancel lunch dates because they are busy, “it’s devastating.” Even more awkward is competing with friends for the same recruiting jobs.

In 2008, Raiffa transferred from Goldman Sachs, where she had worked for nine years, to Orrick. She thought that moving away from investment banking was a smart move in light of the economic troubles.

To her surprise, the law firm began to cut jobs too. Following her boss's orders, she prepared a list of employees who could be terminated. That was when someone tipped her off: she was part of the list.

"My first instinct was to laugh," said Raiffa. It was just the beginning of the challenges her new life would present.

“There’s a lot of work to do when you’re unemployed,” said Dr. Michael Grove, psychologist and president of the Organizational, Consulting and Work Division of the New York State Psychological Association. “You need to deal with feelings, with practical things, with your self-esteem, anger, and relationship issues.”

Emotions aside, Raiffa must first find a way to pay for her $3,245 monthly mortgage and additional living expenses, including food and bills. She collects unemployment benefits that amount to $430 per week, the maximum possible in New York State. She still has a deficit of $2,700 every month. To make up for it she has ventured into doing odd jobs.

Raiffa has done bird sitting, catering, sample sale work and movie previews screening to gauge audience reaction. She earns $12 per film before taxes. With her old salary, of approximately $9,000 per month, she was able to pay all her bills. She placed the remainder into her retirement savings, which were mainly funded by inheritance money.

"It's funny that I'm apparently overqualified to do full-time work in recruiting, but when I apply to $10-an-hour jobs, no one asks any questions," said Raiffa.

She does not receive unemployment benefits on the days that she works, but sometimes, that means she loses money. When she acted as an extra on Law & Order, she earned $80 before tax for a day’s work—six dollars less than she would have received in benefits if she hadn't worked at all. The benefits and random jobs combined are not enough to pay her expenses. She still has to dig into her savings.

“I worry about going into my savings because that’s a nest egg I want to protect. Most of the money came from my father’s inheritance, and he’s not going to die again. It’s all I have for my future,” said Raiffa.

Despite the difficult situation, Raiffa has remained positive. Since May, she has been blogging for “The 405 Club,” an unemployment Web site named after the weekly maximum in New York unemployment benefits before the Obama administration boosted it to $430. She is not afraid to make fun of herself, writing frankly about her various part-time jobs among college-aged people, the bargains she has found in her neighborhood, and even her determination to have a healthy lifestyle. Although she scrambled to eat at cheap pasta bars during the first few weeks of her unemployment, she soon realized that remaining healthy was more valuable than saving a few dollars per meal. By eating right and exercising consistently, she has lost 30 pounds since May.

“If I don’t feel good, at least I look good,” she said.

Fortunately, she has been working on-and-off as a resume reviewer for the business schools of Yale, University of Pennsylvania and Columbia since September. She hopes to segue into academia and find a full-time job in career advising, which she feels is a more secure field in this changing economy.

While Raiffa is worried about her decreasing savings or having a yearlong gap in her resume, she tries to look at the positive aspects of unemployment. When she was in college, she majored in English and studied drama. She had given up all of that when she went into recruiting upon graduation. Now, she is willing to try a new career, meet new people and reconnect with the dreams of her youth.

“It’s as if I get to redo the last twenty years of my life,” she said.