We need your help. Have you been unemployed for an extended period? If so, have you been struggling to keep your skills sharpened or stay up on the new innovations that are changing your field?

We'd like to talk to you about the skills and training that you think you may have missed out on during your weeks/months/years without a job.

Tell us below about your experience with so-called “skill atrophy,” and tell us about how it has affected your job search.

(Occupy Chicago protesters march down Montrose Avenue to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emaunel's house on Saturday, May 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)) Thousands of protesters are planning to march in Chicago during the NATO Summit on Sunday to call for income equality and peace. Post reporter Annie Gowen is there and sending updates from the protest.

For the latest details, Follow Gowen on Twitter or read them below.

Staff writer Peter Whoriskey wrote Thursday about how more older Americans are employed than ever before.

Are you retired or approaching retirement? Do you want to reenter the workforce? Or are you delaying retirement for financial reasons?

Tell us your story below in the comments and/or help inform further reporting on the subject by filling out our survey. Not 55 or older? We’re also interested in the effect of unemployed college graduates on unemployment numbers in America.

(Daniel Acker/Bloomberg) If you’re a college graduate, do you think your degree and the money invested in your education have paid off?

As recently as October 2011, the unemployment rate for college graduates ages 16-24 (there are 16-year-olds with college degrees?) was 8.1 percent — just 0.5 percent lower than the general jobless rate of 8.6 percent.

We’re trying to get in touch with college graduates who are willing to share their experiences with the job market.

Help us report this story by answering a few of these questions.

The end of a year always brings with it a deluge of lists, rankings and and other rearview-mirror analysis about events of the past 12 months and explanations of why or whether they matter.

Many of these pieces tend to focus on the year’s best or most influential people, creations and events. But we’d like to take a page from our friends at The Fix, who wrap up the year with a ‘Worst Year in Washington’ award, a culmination of their regular ‘Worst Week in Washington’ competition.

On Wall Street and in economic policy circles, a few leaders stood out for the bad publicity they endured this year. Some executives were ousted, others were ridiculed for flubbed business decisions. And other prominent figures were ensnared in scandals ranging from white collar crime to illegal hacking to alleged sexual assault.

Who do you think had the worst 2011? The game below allows you to look at our nominees in head-to-head match-ups and decide who fared the worst.