Jobs picture: Still tough out there

Career-help display,
Lucius Beebe Memorial Library,
Wakefield, Mass. (via library's Flickr account)

Today's uptick in the April jobs number notwithstanding, it's interesting to note that this Forbes career how-to on cover letters, posted in late March, is still gaining clicks.

When I first stumbled on it Wednesday, the clicks were just above 12,700; today it's up another 500 to more than 13,200 clicks. (As an aside, I must say that I find it oh-so-satisfying that the post's author, who writes regularly about careers, admits to being flummoxed when asked to help a friend write a cover letter, a task I continue to find arduous.)

What does that +500 mean? That people still are out of work and still looking for jobs, so they still need advice on cover letters. Just take a look at a couple of points in today's Bureau of Labor Statistics release on April's employment picture:

• "The number of unemployed persons, at 13.7 million, changed little in April."
• "The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed over the month..."
• "In April, 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, about the same as a year earlier."

For those of us in journalism's corner of the world, the Kansas City Star announced additional layoffs earlier in the week. And on Monday a site for media professionals suggested there was a stall during April in the pace of listings on various help-wanted job boards.

Bottom line: It's still tough out there.

More weekend readings in journalism

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

Here's some food for thought:

"A Note to Our Readers on the Times Pay Model and the Economics of Reporting" (FiveThirtyEight): The headline on the New York Times politics blog may be a mouthful, but this is the bottom line: "A very small number of news outlets account for a very large share of the English-language reporting that is of national or international interest." That's according to Nate Silver, who tracked which publications were cited most often by everyone for their original reporting on a topic. It's an experiment he did to support the idea that good journalism isn't free and that the pay-to-read model -- like the Times' new metered plan -- is worth the price of subscribing.

" 'Who Needs Newspapers' Project Documents the State of Newsrooms Nationwide" (Editor & Publisher): Valid Sources, a nonprofit focused on finding outstanding practitioners of journalism, is about six months into its year-long effort to lay the foundation for a database that will highlight smaller newspapers that serve their communities well. The year-long project, called "Who Needs Newspapers," expects to identify one newspaper per state each week that deserves recognition; in year two and beyond, local press associations will help to grow the list. One commonality among the papers: they recognize the need to embrace the Internet and new media, and to work both to their advantage.

Visual interlude: The blog 10,000 Words calls "Bloggers vs. Journalists: It's a Psychological Thing" one of the five must-see presentations on digital journalism. The slides were prepared for the recent South by Southwest confab in Austin by Jay Rosen (New York University) and Lisa Williams (Placeblogger) for a discussion on the continuing debate between the two groups.

"Recent College Graduates and the Labor Market" (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco): Switching gears (a bit) from journalism, this report should lay to rest the debate over whether the current "jobless recovery" -- persistent unemployment -- is structural or cyclical. "Structural" argues that workers no longer have the skills desired by employers; "cyclical" says there's less demand for workers, period -- until the economy is firing on all cylinders. "Structural," to me, is demoralizing because it's akin to telling us jobless that we're suddenly unqualified for work; "cyclical" is less damning to individuals because the problem lies elsewhere, in the (im)balance of supply and demand. The San Fran bank, using recent college graduates as the control, concluded that the current downturn and recovery closely mirrors the 2001 recession and its aftermath, which was deemed cyclical. (Whew!)

"The Employment Situation, February 2011: Unemployment Down for Older Women but Not for Men" (AARP Public Policy Institute; pdf): If you're 55 or older and unemployed, according to this monthly report, you're screwed. "Once unemployed, older workers, on average, are out of work longer than their younger counterparts," it says. For the 55-and-older crowd, the length of unemployment rose in February to 45.5 weeks, from 44.4 weeks in January. (For younger workers, it also was up, but stood at 35.2 weeks.) Adds the report: "The recession may be over, but average duration of unemployment has continued to rise, increasing for the older unemployed by 48 percent between the start and end of the recession (December 2007-June 2009) and by 52 percent since the recession ended (June 2009-February 2011)."

Musical fadeout.

Can't get a job? Then you must not have one already

Let's hear a "Hallelujah!" from the congregation on this one: that employers seeking only currently employed applicants for advertised openings may need to rethink that strategy.

You probably know this as the need-a-job-to-get-a-job maxim. By any name, it stinks. But whether it's illegal is not so black and white, as you'll see from this segment that aired today on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street":


As explained by Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, policies that are neutral on their face ("no layoff candidates") but that fall more heavily on particular groups -- African Americans, women, older workers -- "can be illegal under certain circumstances."

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating.

Owens says no law or regulation mandates that an employer consider for a job someone who is unqualified. "But," she says, "if someone is qualified, except for the fact that he or she hasn't recently been employed in that job [field], that's a very arbitrary kind of exclusion."

As an act of discrimination, "It's hard to prove," Owens adds. "But it's not impossible to prove."

If ever there's a class action on this, I just might sign up.

Economy's improvement in eye of beholder

The friendly folks at the state Labor Department sent a letter my way that offers this encouraging assessment: that I have been unemployed for so long (nearly, gulp, 20 months) that "your prospects for finding work in your customary occupation are classified as 'not good'." (Sigh!)

The boldface, which is theirs, then continues to inform me that I now must look for suitable work, which is defined as anything else I could do using the skills from my former occupation or anything else at all that I could do no matter my training or lack of training, as long as whatever comes up in the crap shoot pays "at least 80 percent of your high quarter base period wages."

I vaguely recall that language from somewhere deep in my then-new unemployment insurance booklet, which I dutifully read eons ago. At the time, of course, I knew that it never would apply to ME, since I was a well-educated careerist who had climbed the ranks in my profession and would land in a new job tout de suite.

But -- oops! -- it was indeed meant for me.

So you'll understand the agita that resulted today from a couple of news snippets I caught:

1. The monthly jobs report;
2. A discussion of corporate profits.

The U.S. Labor Department this morning reported an improved employment picture in February, with the nonfarm payroll number up (+192,000) and the unemployment rate down (8.9%). According to the New York Times, the recovery is gaining traction, even if the 64.2 percent of working-age adults in a job or looking for one "is the lowest labor force participation rate in 25 years, an indication that many Americans are waiting for hiring to get better before resuming the job hunt."

Then there was this piece of an interview I caught this morning on CNBC with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. If you skip to about 4:03, you'll hear an exchange between Greenspan and Steve Liesman, the network's senior economics reporter:



"Corporations are as profitable as they've ever been," says Liesman showing a chart indicating after-tax corporate profits as a percentage of gross domestic purchases. "How bad can business conditions really be, given how much corporations are earning these days?" he asks Greenspan.

The former chairman offers a long, considered, Greenspan-esque response, but then adds: "I grant you your point ... there's no question that profits are doing exceptionally well."

"But," he goes on, "you can still have very considerable profitability and not be willing to invest it in illiquid assets."  Um, like what, new workers?

Labor Day weekend reading

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

It's a three-day weekend, so there's more time for reading. Here, with a Labor Day theme, are some gems:

"Most 'Re-employed' Workers Say They're Overqualified for Their New Job" (Pew Research Center): The folks at Pew have come up with some interesting statistics in this national survey, conducted in May and released on Thursday:

• A quarter of the U.S. labor force -- or 36 million of the 139 million currently employed -- faced unemployment at least once during the recession that began in December 2007.
• A third of those cut loose from jobs during the recession received a pink slip more than once; 16 percent found themselves out of work three or more times.
• Only 4 in 10 of those who found a new job say they're earning more now than in their former position; just 28 percent say their current benefits are better.
• More than half of the newly re-employed say their household is worse off financially than before the recession; 35 percent say they've had to make "major changes" in lifestyle.
• A quarter of the re-employed went from full-time jobs to part-time ones.
• While out of work, 6 in 10 of the re-employed thought about switching fields; 4 in 10 considered relocating to an area where jobs seemed more plentiful.

The survey's release preceded by a day the government's report on the U.S. labor picture for August, which showed a slight uptick in the jobless rate, to 9.6 percent. The number of long-term unemployed (six months or more) declined in August, to 6.2 million from 6.5 million, or about 42 percent of the jobless, vs. almost 45 percent in July. The median time unemployed also dropped, to just under 20 weeks, from nearly 23 weeks in July. (Incidentally, the payroll category that includes print journalists -- so-called publishing/except Internet -- saw a slight gain in jobs: to 761,600 in August from 761,300 the month before.)

"Warning: Why Cheaper Money Won't Mean More Jobs" (Talking Points Memo): The political blog featured a post by Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's labor secretary, that throws cold water on the idea that getting money into the hands of consumers and small businesses will grease the wheels of the economy. Neither is in a position to borrow, no matter how cheap the money may be, Reich says. Only large companies would benefit if the Fed made money cheaper, and "they're already sitting on mountains of money." As a result, he says,

If Bernanke and company make it even cheaper to borrow, they'll be subsidizing a third corporate strategy for creating more profits but fewer jobs -- mergers and acquisitions.

And we all know that M&As usually seek economies of scale that endanger jobs.

Labor Day video interlude No. 1.

"What the Spot.Us Community Thinks of Objectivity" (MediaShift IdeaLab): There seems to be a lot of discussion of late as to whether reporters ought to routinely include a kind of confessional sidebar to the stories they write, to alert readers to viewpoints and experiences that might color their work. (Honestly, though, the talk isn't all that new.) Spot.Us, the website that allows reporters to pitch story ideas for funding, surveyed its "community" -- supporters and funders -- to see where they stood on objectivity in journalism.

Nearly 45 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement that "objectivity is possible but difficult," but almost 28 percent said they believed "transparency is the new objectivity." Said one respondent about the latter, "... reporters ought to reveal their biases in each story as part of the narrative so as to partially disarm whatever criticism of bias they may receive. Doing so will provide a better service to the public and will create better journalism."

Be sure to read the smattering of comments from respondents at the end. They're pretty interesting.

"A Journalist Laughs at the Thought that his Layoff Anniversary Is Worth a Story, But..." (Poynter Online): Broadcaster Michael Goldfarb interviews himself about his layoff five years ago from public radio station WBUR in Boston and the slow rebuilding of his professional life as a freelance journalist and author. His conclusion: "I commit as much journalism today as I ever did" -- but he now earns 50 percent less doing it.

Labor Day video interlude No. 2.

"All the Men That's Fit to Print" (The NYTPicker): In case you missed it, a discussion of gender inequality in the obituary pages of the New York Times, by the internal blog that keeps a critical eye on the paper. Interestingly, a Google search turned up a posting to an online version of a Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying (2003) article, "Gender Discrimination after Death," by Robin D. Moremen, that cites numerous academic studies, dating from 1977, that looked at newspaper obituary pages to determine whether men received "greater public recognition after death than women." The answer, not surprisingly, was yes: more obituaries, longer obituaries and obituaries usually accompanied by a photograph.

It's that time again: the weekend read

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

For your reading pleasure this weekend:

"The End of Wishful Thinking" (The American Spectator): Ben Stein has had a good life -- government lawyer, presidential speechwriter, actor ("Ferris Bueller's Day Off") and award-winning game show host ("Win Ben Stein's Money") -- so what's he doing here characterizing me and other unemployed Americans as "generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities"? He starts out expressing dismay that so many formerly successfully people he knows have seen their lives turned upside down by the Great Recession. Then he goes on to slap the unemployed as "people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job." Jeez! Doesn't he know that long-term unemployment is at record levels and that employers are still hesitant to add to payrolls?

But Joe Grimm gets a Huzzah! for ripping Stein and coming to the defense of downsized journalists like me in his Ask the Recruiter column at Poynter Online: "They were laid off because the industry is rapidly changing. In several cases, whole newspapers were shuttered. It was not because the journalists lived imprudently."

So there, Ben Stein!

"To Create Jobs, Cut Everyone's Pay 10%" (MarketWatch): Here's another wacky essay, this one suggesting "EVERYBODY -- from the president down to the chambermaid" take a cut in pay in order to redirect that money to efforts to re-employ about 8 percent of the unemployed. Why 8 percent? It's what would be needed to get the unemployment rate to 4.5 percent, or so-called full employment. (Interestingly, author Ken Mayland is working off a number for unemployed American of 19.2 million, not the 14.6 million represented in the current 9.5 percent unemployment rate. The difference? The underemployed, or people who are working part-time when they really want a full-time job, whom he thinks are being undercounted.)

Mayland realizes his proposal is a bit "whimsical": "Can you imagine union workers acceding to the plan?" he asks.

"In U.S., Confidence in Newspapers, TV News Remains a Rarity" (Gallup): Sigh! It's never good to hear that you're losing the confidence of the citizens you're supposedly serving, but the Fourth Estate didn't make a good showing in this year's Confidence in Institutions poll by Gallup. Of 16 institutions rated, the military did best and Congress did worst, according to the survey. "Americans' confidence in newspapers and television news is on par with Americans' lackluster confidence in banks and slightly better than their dismal rating of health management organizations and big business," say the folks at Gallup.

One ironic twist in the findings: "While 18- to 29-year-olds express more trust in newspapers than most older Americans, Gallup polling has found they read national newspapers the least."

"Your Online Presence Says a Lot More About You than a Resume Can" (The Business Insider): I've always hated the use of sports terminology in business ("hail mary," "heavy hitter," "power play"), so I'm thankful we don't yet have to worry about this one: "Roll the game tape." Or do we?

Author Keith Cowing writes that rather than static résumés, jobseekers now can present more three-dimensional portraits of themselves through blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube/Vimeo, etc. His advice is to leave these kinds of bread crumbs lying around to give "a slightly raw view" of who you are.

"Don’t wait until you need a game tape to make one," he says. "Make it as you go. Tell the world who you are and how you think. Share some thoughts, take part in discussions, and let your game tape represent you truthfully as you go through your career."

But it's probably a good idea to Google yourself occasionally to see just how "raw" you might be coming across.

Finally, there was an interesting discussion this afternoon at an online Poynter Institute chat about women being underrepresented at journalism technology conferences and how to remedy it. That led back to this archived article:

"Revenge of the Nerds: Fighting Sexism at Tech Events" (Wendy Norris blog), which is, sadly, a hoot on bad taste: female crotch shots on the big screen, scantily clad sirens at trade show booths. In trying to discourage the latter, one tech event co-organizer offered, "At last year’s conference, someone had a bunch of stripper types in hot pants and absurdly tight t-shirts. It was totally cheap, cheesy and lame. It’s 2009, people, really."

Really, indeed.

More weekend reading

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

Set aside time this weekend for these worthwhile reads:

"Analysis: Why did 1.2 million U.S. workers leave job force?" (Reuters): The U.S. Department of Labor today posted job statistics for July that showed nonfarm payroll falling by 131,000, but -- as occurred in June too -- the unemployment rate not bouncing higher. One possible explanation is that more people are moving to the sidelines, discouraged after many months of looking and so giving up their search. According to Reuters, the labor force participation rate "dropped to 64.6 percent in July, matching the lowest level since 1985." Remember that the ratio of jobless worker to available opening is still close to 5-to-1.

And speaking of the long-term unemployed:

"99 weeks later, jobless have only desperation" (New York Times): Left in the cold when unemployment benefits were extended in July were people who already had claimed as many weeks of benefits as is currently allowed: 99. Although there have been attempts to change that maximum, the concern now is the growing deficit -- matched by a growing belief that the longer the benefits, the greater the disincentive to search for work. But as the Times story recounts, for the 99ers, "The last vestiges of their former working-class or middle-class lives are gone; it is inescapable now that they are indigent."

"Hard times working the Patch" (Media Nation blog): Dan Kennedy, assistant professor at the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston (and no relation to me), publishes on his blog an email he received from a local editor at Patch, the fast-growing network of online community news sites owned by AOL. Just as Associated Content (now owned by Yahoo) and Demand Media (which today filed its long-expected prospectus to sell stock to the public) are seen as experiments in revenue-generation in journalism, so too is Patch, which helps put in business individuals interested in reporting on their towns and neighborhoods. AC and Demand have been criticized for their pay models; Patch for its one-guy-does-it-all design. The email confirms that work at what might be the next iteration of local-news coverage can be all-consuming: "Basically, the job is 24/7 with so far little support in getting any kind of time off."

"For Communication grads, a tough job market" (Project for Excellence in Journalism): Each year, the University of Georgia surveys journalism and mass communication graduates to see how they're doing in the real world, and the picture for the Class of 2009 was downright ugly: just over half of the graduates were able to find full-time work in a year's time, a record low in the history of the 24-year-old study. And if not getting a job was bad, worse still was the lower salaries and benefit seen by those who did land a job, the study said.

Finally, there's this gem, which I was alerted to via Twitter the other day:

"The Confessions of Bob Greene" (Esquire, from 2003): It's a loooooooong article about the fall of the former Chicago Tribune columnist. Tweeting a link to it was longform.org, a group that loves "great long-form reads" and a product it thinks displays them well. I can't speak for the product, but the article is worth every minute of your time.

For the nightstand: weekend reading

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

In the interest of exercising brain cells this weekend, I offer this worth-reading list:

"Pressure Cooker Journalism" (Newspaper Death Watch): The pace of the online newsroom is leading some to worry about burnout. Blogger Paul Gillin links to the New York Times article about life in the fast lane at Politico in Washington, D.C., and talks about the use of traffic stats to keep the stories coming.

"Increased Worker Productivity Has Destroyed Millions of Jobs, and We Should Be Grateful" (Carpe Diem): Economics Professor Mark Perry posts charts on manufacturing output and jobs to argue that "Any time we can get more output with fewer workers ... it's a sure sign of economic progress and a rising standard of living." (Tell that to the nearly 15 million unemployed, half of whom have been out of work for six months or more. Their standard of living is not rising.)

"The ‘Great Recession’ Earns Its Title" (Economix): Statistics bear out of use of the moniker, even if "great" at first seemed ill-advised.

"No Fed Plans to Give More Support, Bernanke Says" (New York Times): The Fed chairman sees the unemployment rate remaining above 7 percent through 2012, and said it would take “a significant amount of time” to gain back jobs lost in the recession.

And from the Fed's own mouth: "Current Economic Conditions," the so-called Beige Book (Google docs) assessment of the state of the local economy in the 12 Fed districts. Bottom line: the economy continues to improve, but at a s-l-o-w pace.

These days, you need a job to get a job

Although some recruiters pooh-poohed it, others saw it as being on point: A CNN Money story this month that pulled back the curtain on the dirty little secret that it takes a job to get a job. Or, as the headline stated, "Looking for work? Unemployed need not apply."

While it may not be a new story, it deserves a periodic revisit so we can get upset about it all over again.

Remember that the Great Recession that began in December 2007 has created a huge class of long-term unemployed -- workers who have been jobless for six months or more. In May, the latest month with available statistics, their number stood at 6.8 million, or about 46 percent of the country's 15 million unemployed, according to the government. (The numbers for June will be released at 8:30 a.m. Friday.)

To Jesse Rothstein, chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, these jobless workers were "unlucky enough to lose jobs in 2008 or 2009 when there weren't any other jobs to be had."

His comment came during a program hosted by the Economic Policy Institute to draw attention to the extension to unemployment insurance due to run out this month. You can see Rothstein's "unlucky" remark here, at about 2:10 into the video:




He also made another interesting point, at about 2:20: that today's long-term unemployed worker is different from his/her predecessor.

"Ordinarily, they look like a very disadvantaged group with very low education, other measures, other things that are indicative of disadvantage," he said. "Right now, that's much less true.

"You see relatively many college-educated people who are long-term unemployed. It's not so much that these are people who are not qualified for jobs, it's that there aren't any jobs to hire them."

Indeed, the statistics from May show that 4.7 percent of the civilian labor force that was unemployed, or about 2.1 million people, held a bachelor's degree or higher. During the 2001 recession, that same group had an unemployment rate of just 2.1 percent in May and numbered 771,000.

Despite that measure of being qualified, employers still aren't willing to take a chance, says one recruiter, because if the jobless were really good at what they did, they'd be collecting a paycheck, not unemployment benefits. Jeez.

UPDATE: The government reported Friday that the number of long-term unemployed was unchanged in June at 6.8 million. The unemployment rate declined slightly for the month to 9.5 percent, and the number of unemployed overall dropped a bit to 14.6 million.

Here's how unemployment looks, animated

This graphic came to my attention tonight via Twitter, an animated look at the run-up in unemployment, month-by-month and county-by-county, between January 2007 and March this year.

It's striking how strained the labor market grew through 2009.

The animation was done by LaToya Egwuelewe, originally as a graduate school project at American University in Washington, D.C. She got an A on it, she tells CNN in an interview that aired in December. (Note that the animation is an update of the map shown in the video; the video takes about 25 seconds to load.)




The CNN anchor captures the work perfectly: "The illustration is beautiful in a very ugly way for many, many American workers."

Will the metro data, which lags release of the overall U.S. jobless rate, show any improvement in the next report, for April, which is due out June 2? Probably not. You'll remember that while the government reported a net gain in jobs in April, the unemployment rate for the month still ticked up as workers who had left the labor market relaunched their job searches.

The government is due to release the May jobs report next Friday, June 4.

(The Bureau of Labor Statistics lets you take your own look at metro-level unemployment here.)

UPDATE: The BLS reported some improvement in April's numbers. From the release: "Unemployment rates were higher in April than a year earlier in 291 of the 372 metropolitan areas, lower in 73 areas, and unchanged in eight areas." In the March report, unemployment rates were higher than a year earlier in 321 metro areas. While 28 metros recorded jobless rates of at least 15 percent in March, just 14 metros were reporting a rate that high in April.

Simplistic recovery: just talk it up

It was the kind of exchange on the economy that was dumb on the face of it. And coming in a TV exchange among journalist, I cringed:

"... but let's not forget, the President is our leader and the consumer looks to our leader for some kind of indication that things are getting better. If he were to just take a more positive tone and really stress the optimism there with this GDP report, might that not sort of become somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy where people feel better and therefore spend more, and the economy moves forward more quickly?"

Argh! I wanted to lunge at the television after hearing it. (You can listen for yourself, at about 11:17.)


 
 So all President Barack Obama has to do is talk up the economy and it will take off? Yeah, sure.

The occasion was Obama's response to the report today from the Commerce Department that the U.S. economy grew in the first quarter at an annual rate of 3.2 percent, better than what was seen during the depths of the Great Recession but still just so-so.

"Our economy as a whole is in a much better place than it was one year ago," Obama told reporters in a statement and photo-op outside the White House. But he also acknowledged that while a positive number for the gross domestic product is good, "it doesn't mean much to an American who has lost his or her job and can't find another."

For the unemployed -- now totaling 15 million, with a record 6.5 million out of work for six months or more -- " 'You're hired' is the only economic news they're waiting to hear," Obama said.

I'm in that latter group -- long-term unemployed (nearly 10 months) and doing my best to hear "you're hired" -- so I'm neither willing nor able to boost my consumer spending, whether Obama flogs the GDP numbers or not.

So the anchor-reporter exchange on "The Call," the mid-morning CNBC business show, struck me as ludicrous -- as it also seemed to the reporter on the segment, chief Washington correspondent John Harwood.

"I doubt it personally, Trish," he responded to Trish Regan's comment that the president can influence the economy by being more upbeat. (Regan anchors the hour-long show with Larry Kudlow, who, by the way, suggested after the Obama statement that the president sounded "downbeat.")

Continued Harwood, "I'm not sure a president's words can talk up or talk down the economy. We do see the consumer coming back [the Commerce Department report also highlighted an improvement in so-called personal consumption expenditures] -- that is something that is helping this recovery."

But with unemployment still near 10 percent, he said, Obama will walk a fine line in taking credit for programs that are aiding the recovery without seeming to convey the message "mission accomplished."

Give Obama points for offering some empathy to those of us who are still unemployed; happy talk on the economy provides no comfort.

And send Regan back to school for an economics refresher course.

Got a job? Keep it, so I can get one too

Economic Policy Institute chart shows ratio of workers per available job

Here's an unreasonable request: If you've got a job, stay in it awhile so you're not competing with me for any available openings.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics today released its monthly JOLTS report, which shows some improvement in the number of workers vying for each job that is available. According to the Economic Policy Institute, which tracks JOLTS, the February ratio of unemployed workers to available job was 5.5 to 1, an improvement from the high in November of 6.2 job-seekers per opening.

JOLTS -- formally the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey -- lags the unemployment report by a month. So while on Friday the government said the U.S. employment picture brightened in March, up 162,000 jobs in nonfarm payroll, that wasn't the case in February. Then, the country still was losing jobs: down 14,000 for the month in a revised count.

Although the JOLTS numbers show that so-called separations -- layoff, firing, quitting and retirement -- are down from a year earlier, hiring has remained flat, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Says EPI: "The good news is that layoffs are down to where they were before the recession (started), and hiring is no longer declining. The bad news is that hiring is nowhere near the levels required to put this country’s 15 million jobless workers back to work."

Indeed, while the government reported the economy was adding jobs in March, it also said the so-called U-6 rate -- the measure of labor underutilization -- was up for the month: more people were taking part-time work who preferred full-time jobs, and the number of workers "marginally attached" (want a job but not actively looking) and "discouraged" (have given up looking) also rose.

Meantime, the government said Friday, the number of long-term unemployed workers -- jobless for six months or more -- rose by 414,000 in March to 6.5 million, or 44.1 percent of those without jobs.

So now you know the genesis of my plea for the employed to avoid job-hopping for the time being.

Sure, some of the jobs posted as available might look enticing, but don't you think those of us "involuntarily separated" from our previous jobs -- laid off -- might want first dibs?

After all, the March unemployment report showed that the industry category that includes newspapers (information/publishing industries except Internet) continues to lose jobs -- down 59,000 from a year ago and 2,100 just from February. (Here's the government's chart on nonfarm payroll by industry sector for March.)

Yes, I understand that a job opening will still exist if a worker at Company A applies for and lands a job advertised at Company B. But here's the thing: While I may be ideal for the Company B job, I might not be as neat a fit for the one at Company A.

Case in point: Several months ago, I applied for a job as a business columnist and blogger at a newspaper in Florida; more recently, I did the same for a job as business editor in Washington, D.C. In each case, I fit the job description to a T. (While I wasn't a local candidate, in neither case was that a job requirement.)

The first job went to a non-journalist (a banker); the second to someone who edited at a politics-focused niche paper. So while I was 110 percent qualified for the advertised jobs, I couldn't claim that for the posts the job-hoppers left -- especially the commercial lender.

The lesson here? It's already a tough job market without the gainfully employed entering the fray as competitors too. So, please, if you've got a job, hands off the newly available ones.

The club you don't want to join

Apparently, I'm in good company.

Those of us severed from our jobs by the Great Recession now are spending a longer time out of work: 29.1 weeks, according to today's December jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor. That's up from 28.6 weeks in November.

And the Labor Department said the percentage of workers who found themselves unemployed for six months or more also was up last month -- to 39.8 percent, vs. 38.7 percent in November. These so-called long-term unemployed -- 4 in 10 jobless workers -- numbered 6.1 million in December. (The total number of unemployed workers last month was 15.3 million.)

Meantime, for those of us in the job category known as "information," which includes newspapers hammered by buyouts and layoffs over the past year, our time out of work averaged 30.4 weeks in December, according to a separate report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's more than seven months without a job.

The Labor Department report -- showing another 85,000 jobs lost -- was seen as disappointing after some improvement in November: "U.S. Job Losses in December Dim Hopes for Quick Upswing," said a New York Times headline; "Economy Still Bleeding Jobs," said the Wall Street Journal.

And the talking heads on CNBC's "Squawk Box" this morning sounded concerned as they cited some of the data deep in the report: that the labor force was declining rather than growing; that the U6 rate -- the broadest measure of unemployment that includes workers discouraged by few job prospects and part-timers who'd rather be working full time -- "ticked up for the first time in awhile." (Listen in particular to Mark Zandi at about 5:20 into the segment and Steve Liesman at 5:42.)

Yesterday, I hit the six-month mark in my unemployment. The shock and embarrassment of being laid off has been replaced by the shock and embarrassment of not being hired.

I bet I'm in good company there, too.

Your next job? Think outside the box

Say you've been looking to return to journalism, like I have, and you're starting to get antsy (or frantic) about the now-growing gap in your resume. Let's take a look beyond the legacy media at some of your (ah-hem) best options:

* Become a celebrity blogger. You remember Paris Hilton, socialite, reality-show star, actress and businesswoman? If you're a fan, you could follow her for a Web site that features all Paris all the time. It's a paid gig (thank goodness!) that requires HTML and SEO familiarity, as well as Twitter and other social media skills. And you need to be something of a paparazzi, as "candid photos, candid videos" are desired.

Just submit a couple of writing samples and links to any online work, and you're golden. Don't bother with a resume; none is needed, according to the ad.

* Move from news writing to porn writing. That may be off the mark a bit, but I recall an ad a few months back that promised more money per word the more risque you were able to write. More recently, an ad titled "Fun Job for Out of Work Journalists" offered to hire copy editors and development editors to work on erotic romance novels. The pay was awful -- $17.50 for copy editing a 10,000-word book -- and in addition to having a "good grasp of grammar" and meeting deadlines, you had to "feel comfortable with frank language and graphic sexual descriptions."

* Oversee social media for big names in the defense industry. These pop up with regularity on job boards. A recent one, for instance, sought "a creative and innovative editor to moderate discussion forums and manage reader comments on web sites targeting the Middle East region." You had to be adept with Facebook, Twitter and multimedia, and fluent in Arabic. Oh, and you had to be able to qualify for a security clearance, too.

* Volunteer. Occasionally a job looks promising in an ad, but come to find out it offers no pay because a nonprofit is looking for volunteer help. This is admirable work, of course, helping to produce, for instance, a monthly newspaper to aid the homeless or to spread the word on a group looking to empower inner-city girls.

Call me selfish, but I can't think about doing anything unpaid until I find paying work.

Object lesson: Save a journalist

When my daughters were younger, perhaps in middle school, I used to paint for them a grim picture of what would happen if they didn't read a newspaper.

Never mind offering pearls of wisdom on the importance of being an informed and involved citizen in a democracy. No, I had a more object lesson: "If you don't read newspapers, I won't have a job."

Well, now the joke's on me as I and many other newsroom orphans form a long unemployment line. My kids' failure to pick up the newspaper-reading habit has cost some 15,000 journalists their jobs this year.

To be fair, it wasn't solely their fault nor their generation's. I remember being in college, yearning to be a journalist, and a friend telling me she had no use for newspapers. I was appalled then, too.

But like their Boomer parents, Millennials are a demographic force to be reckoned with. Newspapers just haven't figured out how to serve them.

Part of that stems from the Millennials' belief that if something is important enough to be news, it will find them, rather than them having to seek it out.

Don't believe me? Check out this blog from Carol Phillips at Brand Amplitude, a brand research firm in Stevensville, Mich., a Lake Michigan community not far from South Bend, Ind., where Phillips is an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame: "Social media offers a way for Millennials to control and shape their news by filtering it through friends or reporters they trust."

I used to think that was pretty self-centered and presumptuous of Millennials, believing they were so important the news would come to them. But a passage in Harper's, in a long, long ode to the San Francisco Chronicle, finally offered some perspective.

In it, a friend of the author explains how he consumes news, unfettered by a newspaper's ties to its native city and vice versa: " 'If I think of what many of my friends and I read these days, it is still a newspaper, but it is clipped and forwarded in bits and pieces on email—a story from the New York Times, a piece from Salon, a blog from the Huffington Post, something from the Times of India, from YouTube. It is like a giant newspaper being assembled at all hours, from every corner of the world, still with news but no roots in a place. Perhaps we do not need a sense of place anymore.' " (emphasis added)

And, in fact, I do that too: In addition to reading newspapers in print and online, I sign on daily to an iGoogle homepage populated with RSS feeds from journalism blogs and news sites I don't want to miss. Via email I get alerts of breaking news, new entries from favorite blogs, and daily summaries of industry trends and talk. And those daughters, who never developed the habit of daily reading a newspaper, send links to things they want me to enjoy.

But how do you create from this seemingly chaotic consumption pattern a sustainable business model that can re-employ all of us laid-off journalists? I wish I had the answer.

I'm unemployed, not 'damaged'

Now that sentiment is growing that the Great Recession likely ended in June -- and ignoring the idea of a jobless recovery -- will those of us who were laid off have an easier time soon finding new work?

I sure hope so. I've been bothered by the news reports and commentary that employers are less interested in out-of-work candidates than in so-called passive ones -- workers who have remained employed and aren't necessarily looking for a new job. Companies will approach an engineer attending a professional conference, for instance, rather than combing through resumes.

A Wall Street Journal story in June (the headline said it all: "Only the Employed Need Apply") riled up one recruiter, who on her blog criticized the practice, saying it was the economic meltdown that put many of those laid off on the unemployment line, not their job performance.

"We’re so far past the point of equating the unemployed with damaged (goods)," she wrote. "This kind of short-sightedness in this marketplace makes my blood boil."

But even in the case of obvious economic layoffs -- a manufacturing division closed and its workers dismissed -- the Journal story said a client of one search firm looking for an executive wanted to talk to still-employed candidates, rather than consider the head of the closed division.

Where do we go from here?

Twenty-five years, minus one month and two days. It’s what I’ve calculated as the interval between layoffs. It’s the sing-song that plays in my head.

The first layoff, at a wire service, came in 1984, on the 10th anniversary of the Aug. 9 resignation of Richard Nixon as president.

The second occurred this summer, on July 7, my brother’s birthday. As he turned 49, I joined the ranks of 14.46 million Americans who were unemployed, 7.64 million of us classified by the government as "not on temporary layoff."

In the first layoff, I was a pregnant desk editor and the wire service (story in; edit; story out) was struggling financially. I had been there nearly six months, following several years as city editor at a small-town daily. I was laid off the day before my six-month probation ended and benefits were to kick in.

In the second, I was business editor on a Top 100 daily that was scrambling to cut costs. Two others with “executive” in their titles, like me, and one senior editor also were let go. I had been there 9½ years; the senior editor, denoting newsroom hierarchy, not age or purview, was a veteran of more than two decades. We were among 18 sliced from the payroll in one day, 11 in news.

Nearly two years passed between the first layoff and my return to work -- but not for lack of trying.