Chronic unemployment in the US

The situation is really bad:

Just one in five people who were out of work last summer have found jobs since then.

Of more than a thousand unemployed people surveyed by Rutgers University researchers last August, just 21 percent had landed a job by March, a followup survey reveals. Two-thirds remained "unemployed" according to the government's definition -- the rest gave up looking for work altogether, either going to school or retiring early.

From the Huffington Post, via Rajiv in this iTulip thread. I wonder what this is going to mean for the future? If there are a lot of chronically unemployed people, the social effects of this could be far-reaching.