Platform To Employment Making Progress with Long Term Jobless

Ray Hodge lost his job as an energy company's logistics director in June of 2009.

"The company took a new direction and placed emphasis on being a hedge fund," he said.

Hodge didn't have much luck looking for a new job. "I didn't receive any interviews. People said, 'Nice resume, but you don't fit the criteria as well as some other people we have in mind.' How much of that is true and how much is because I'm a little more senior? A lot of things come into play, but you try not to focus on that because it could lead you into a state of depression."

Now Hodge, who is 64 and lives in Trumbull, Conn., has found work, thanks partly to an innovative Connecticut program targeting "99ers" -- people who have been out of work for 99 weeks or longer and have run out of unemployment insurance. There were nearly 2 million Americans who had been out of work that long in July, according to the Labor Department.

The program is called "Platform to Employment," and it has received a lot of attention since a February "60 Minutes" segment that suggested it could be a national solution to the crisis of long-term unemployment. Its creator, Joe Carbone, has testified before Congress and traveled to other states to share information about P2E, as he sometimes calls it.