As it turns out the American public still has a large amount of optimism left in it, even during these very bleak times. Give the media coverage of the current long-term economic down turn and the very serious problems that are growing number of Americans are facing, with no source of income, no health insurance coverage, little savings and bleak prospects for righting the situation in the near future, it is surprising to find out that some people who are without a job are actually looking on the sunny side.

According to the results of poll by the New York Times/CBS News a great number of people getting benefits from unemployment insurance said that the their benefits were not enough to meet their basic needs. This part is not the surprise, since anyone who has collected uninsurance employment in the past can tell you it comes nowhere near what a salary would.

The shocking part of this research is that despite this bleak reality people still have hope. Yes, they are still optimistic about their prospects about eventually finding a job that they can call their own. In addition, despite the layoffs that are sweeping the land, they also held out the belief that once they were able to find a job they would be able to do so at a rate of pay that would be close to, or higher than what they had been paid at their previous positions. They also expect to be able to find these long-term positions within the next calendar year.

While no one is sure what exactly is fueling these happy thoughts it is certainly not the current situation that the unemployed find themselves in. After all several states in the union have decided to make durational cuts to the unemployment benefits they are offering, in a bid to balance their own budgets. And then, politics have entered the party. For some time now President Obama has been urging members of the congress to pass legislation renewing a program that offers federal jobless benefits to people who are having problems finding a job in the longer term. If this legislation is not renewed many people could find themselves without benefits entirely. This is a point of anxiety for many of the unemployed, since they fear that the benefits will run out before they are able to find new jobs.

Many house republicans have been publicly criticizing the extended unemployment benefits as being too expensive, but many of the jobless still earn a significantly lower amount then they did in the past, not even enough to pay for the bare necessities such as housing and food.

As you can imagine this leads to problems such as foreclosure and homelessness. These issues caused a serious amount of emotional strain. The phone-based portion of the survey, which included 445 unemployed adults, showed that more than half o the respondents had experienced problems with depression or anxiety because of their status as jobless or the job search.