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There’s really only one way to know what it’s like to be involuntarily unemployed, and nobody ever wants to find out. However, a good set of statistics can tell us a lot, and a recent study paints a sobering picture of the world of Iowa’s long-term unemployed.

Iowa Workforce Development, in cooperation with Iowa State University, sent a survey to 2,000 people who had exhausted their unemployment benefits, and received 587 responses.

In those responses, we see anguish reduced to arithmetic. Three-fourths of the respondents said unemployment has caused stress in their relationships with family or friends; 28 percent reported a good deal of stress.

Seventy percent said this stress was severe enough to affect their sleeping patterns. Two-thirds reported “uneasiness or restlessness.”

Even as life goes along rather normally for thousands of their fellow Iowans, almost 90 percent of the long-term unemployed have reduced their overall spending, and 72 percent have used money “from savings set aside for other things or retirement to make ends meet.”

While the fortunate shuttle between work and home, bored with the routine, the unemployed comb through Internet job boards or employer websites (67 percent), go to a Workforce Center for help (60 percent) and network with colleagues and friends (56 percent).

“Most activities were found to be helpful by those individuals choosing to do them,” according to the report. “Only ‘attending a job fair’ was found to be more not helpful than helpful.”

But “helpful” is a modest result without a paycheck to add to it.

More than half of the survey respondents reported having zero, one or two job interviews since losing their jobs. Just 4 percent have turned down a job offer.

The bottom line is: Unemployment is more than being bored and spending less. It’s a different way of experiencing the world.

Relatives, friends and employers need to understand that.