The memory stings even now for Jon Creek, all these years after the job interview.

He’d applied to be a bookkeeper at a property-management company when one of the owners caught him off guard: “He said, ‘You’ve been out of work for a year now. You can only clean the garage so many times. Why can’t you get a job?”’ Creek recalls.

“My answer was, ‘I’m trying to get a job now,”’ he says.

The frustrations of one 35-year-old Ohio man are multiplied millions of times over across time zones and generations in a country still gripped by economic anxiety, despite increasing signs of recovery. And they resound in a presidential campaign pitting an incumbent defending his economic record against GOP opponents who are attacking it.

Unemployment in January was at its lowest level in three years – 8.3 percent – and 1.8 million jobs were added last year, compared with about 1 million in 2010. But there’s still a long way to go: There are 5.6 million fewer jobs than there were when the recession began in late 2007.

About 12.8 million people are out of work, and what’s especially troubling, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is the large number of long-term unemployed – more than 40 percent have been jobless more than six months.

The long-term unemployed don’t fit into any neat category. They’re young and old. They have high school diplomas and master’s degrees. Some become so discouraged, they stop looking for a time or become mid-life college students. Others find temporary jobs, then return to the jobless rolls for long stretches. In 2011, the average length of being out of work was 39 weeks – about nine months.

But statistics tell only part of the story. They don’t gauge the despair of a thirtysomething office manager who has stopped counting how many résumés he’s sent out. Or the apprehension of a 60-ish tool-and-die maker who lost his job, returned to school, but still can’t find work – and doubts he ever will again.

Creek, who lives in Mason, was a construction company office manager until he and almost everyone else at the firm were laid off in December 2007. He’d known the business was in trouble and says he actually turned down another better-paying job earlier, out of loyalty.

It took 18 months to land part-time work as an insurance agent’s assistant at $240 a week – a dollar less than his unemployment checks.

A year later, Creek was stunned when a certified letter arrived with his final paycheck and notice that his job was over. Again, it was the economy. To add to the injury, his boss had posted the news on her Facebook page before telling him. “Everybody knew but me,” he says.

And since she hadn’t done the proper paperwork, he couldn’t file for unemployment.

That was August 2010. Creek – who holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration – has been looking since, worried that as time passes, someone unemployed for, say, six months may seem more appealing.

“I worked hard. I did everything right,” he says. “Now I’m at the point of asking myself, ‘Will I ever be able to get anything?’ It’s not just about a salary. It’s about being able to go out and say, ‘I do this. This is my identity.”’

On occasion, Creek, now 35, has become so discouraged, he’s temporarily quit looking. “If you send out your résumé so many times, every employer in the city has it,” he says. “If you take it out of the mix for a while, perhaps you’ll get noticed next time.”

Being unemployed not only hurts financially – Creek has an $11,000-plus student loan – it leaves emotional scars, too. “The only people I talk to during the day are my wife, my dogs and service people,” he says. “It’s very isolating, very lonely.”

His wife, Leslie, a financial analyst, is a constant comfort. “She tells me I’m smart, that I have a lot to offer,” he says.

Creek is considering returning to school this fall to get a master’s degree in accounting.

“Sometimes you feel like playing the victim card,” he says, “but you really don’t want to. It tells the employer you’re not very confident. I tell myself good things are to come ... but it’s hard to remain hopeful.”