Today, a report detailing more critical and in-depth analysis of the situation by two economists gives another reason for the drop in the unemployment rate.  It appears Baby Boomers are the culprits for this drop.  Apparently this demographic has been retiring at a quicker rate than thought last month and even as far back as 2010.  This has caused the unemployment rate to effectively go down.

Moody’s Analytics showed that for April, many more individuals who were employed dropped out of the labor force than those who were not employed, dropping the effective unemployment rate.  This indicates that those individuals leaving an established job were most likely retirees leaving to enjoy their golden years.  This is much better news than the previous report of the reason for the lowing of unemployment rate resulting from discouraged workers leaving the ranks of those looking for work.

Additionally, you would deduct, if this is the case, there are more jobs opening-up out there attributed to the larger numbers of individuals retiring.  This is not a foregone conclusion as some companies may not be interested in replacing a significant number of retired workforces but rather let attrition take its course in order to cut costs.   This would be very disappointing considering the fact that corporations are sitting on huge reserves on their balance sheets.

It’s long overdue for American corporations to spring back to life and show their positive expectations of a robust recovery by hiring rather than putting attrition into action.  This country is ready to spring-back to life; we need corporate America to empower our Super Bowl second half.

Additionally, the increase of 115,000 jobs in April 2012 was less than forecasted and significantly anemic of what is needed to gain back the millions of jobs lost in the recession.

On a more positive note, revisions of the March job 154,000 gains were actually larger than initially estimated.

In our ongoing series of articles addressing positive job news happening in the U.S., we are focusing on the locations and industries where jobs are available rather than not.

The top five states with lowest unemployment rates as of March 2012, along with the prevalent industries of each state are listed below.  With the ongoing difficulty finding employment in the U.S., job hunters with the specific skills congruent with the various states’ industries may want to consider a move to the states with the lowest unemployment rates aligned with the job skills of the individual.

NORTH DAKOTA, 3.0% Unemployment Rate

Top Industries:  Agriculture, mining, oil and gas production, and manufacture of food products and farm implements.

NEBRASKA, 4.0% Unemployment Rate

Top Industries:  Farming (corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum), grain processing, meat-packing, and the military Air Force Strategic Air Command.

SOUTH DAKOTA, 4.3% Unemployment Rate

Top Industries:  Retail, finance, and health care service industries, tourism, agriculture and farming including cattle, corn, wheat, soy beans and hogs, and ethanol production.

VERMONT, 4.8% Unemployment Rate

Top Industries:  Maple syrup production, dairy farming, tourism, electronics, and forest industry products.

NEW HAMPSHIRE, 5.2% Unemployment Rate

Top Industries:  Machinery, dairy farming, electrical equipment manufacturing, scientific instruments, gravel and sand.

There is some new light glimmering on the distant horizon though.  Alabama might just be your state of choice if you are looking for such heavy industry work.  Just last Monday, the 30th of April, the Korean mega automotive company Hyundai announced it will be adding a third shift at its Montgomery Alabama production plant.  This means a total of almost 900 new jobs in automotive manufacturing.

Over the last decade, the success of Hyundai has been nothing short of phenomenal.  Their new lineup of world-class vehicles is competing with the well-established and long-time dominant import brands like Honda, Toyota and Nissan.  Their vehicles have built growing customer-loyalty, as they are offered at a lower base MSRP price-point with superior amenities and standard extras over their market-leading import rivals.    Add to this the fact that these vehicles are now American made along with increasing numbers of television commercials spouting their superior attributes, and you have a recipe for success.  The Hyundai job creation for Alabama over the last decade is a welcome and enjoyable boost to the local economy.

As far as the 530 new jobs in the energy sector go, Walter Energy Inc. just revealed plans on Tuesday, the 1st of May, its plans to invest $1.2 billion in Alabama.  Walter Energy already employs 2,100 workers in Alabama with a total payroll of 4,400 individuals including the other state operations.

Walter Energy is going to be developing new properties to include an underground metallurgical coal mine in Tuscaloosa County, a coal terminal at the Port of Mobile, a rail spur in Fayette County, and a barge load-out facility in Walker County.  Approximately 50 of the new jobs will be at the Port of Mobile, while the remainder at the other two locations.

While it will take all of the jobs approximately 6 years to mature, the total payroll for the new projects will be around $45 million annually with an average pay and benefits package weighing in at $120,000 per employee.

The main decision for Alabama being the location of choice for Walter Energy has to do with the state’s tax incentives for these new industries, which include the coal industry. The Alabama legislature seems to be determined to aggressively pass bills to create jobs in the state through tax breaks and corporate incentives.

If your career is along the lines of this new job, the state of Alabama may hold your next new position.

Enter the shale oil and shale natural gas industry. This is a relatively new and unconventional oil and gas production boom that is set to take the U.S. and world by storm.  Supposedly, to date, there have already been 600,000 jobs directly attributed to the quickly growing shale gas industry alone.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Government recently commissioned a study by INTEK, Inc. This study was set into motion in order to assess and map the onshore lower 48 states supposedly recoverable shale gas and shale oil resources.

The assessment found that the U.S. has a total of 750 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas resources.  It seems the Northeast part of the country has the largest reserves at 63%, the Gulf Coast at 13%, and the Southwest regions at 10% of those 750 trillion cubic feet of energy producing, clean burning natural gas.  If we include the conventional and unconventional reserves in the lower 48, Alaska and offshore potential, the total is 4.244 quadrillion cubic feet.

To put the above into perspective, according to the Institute for Energy Research, at current levels of power consumption, that’s enough energy to power our electricity needs for the next 575 years and represents more natural gas than Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkmenistan and Russia have combined.  Now that’s something worth crowing about.

Geologists believe the Marcellus Shale in northeastern Pennsylvania State contains the second-largest natural gas deposits in the world, behind only Iran’s natural gas fields in the Persian Gulf. According to the Central Bradford Progress Authority, at the Marcellus Shale formation, more than 700 wells have been drilled in Bradford County, more than 300 are operational and more than 2,000 drilling permits have been issued.

As far as shale oil reserves goes, that quantity trapped in U.S. shale is also impressive.  Supposedly, the U.S. has 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in the shale of federally-owned lands of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.  While all of this shale oil is not considered to be recoverable, a large portion is.  Three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia or 800 billion barrels are considered to be eventually recoverable.  More immediately recoverable shale oil, according to the INTEK assessment for EIA is more modest at a total of 23.9 billion barrels available to the horizontal drills in the lower 48 states.  Out of the total, the Southern California Monterey/Santos find is supposedly the largest shale oil formation discovered, and believed to hold 15.4 billion barrels or 64 percent of the total estimated shale oil resources found. After Monterey, the reserves found in Wyoming and Montana called the Bakken Shale with 3.6 billion barrels and then the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas hold 3.4 billion barrels of black gold.

These finds are encouraging, at least if you are of the fossil fuel persuasion.  For those hoping for the dominance of green energy, a curb to global climate change, it may represent a setback.

What does all of this have to do with jobs you may be asking?  Well, energy independence and lower cost fuel is the key to a vibrant economy and recovered job market. Normal supply/demand dynamics are at play here.  When there is an excess of a commodity, more than the current demand dictates, the price of that commodity tends to go down, thereby saving businesses and consumers tons of money.

According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, low cost, natural gas used in industry will save $11 billion per year in US manufacturing.  This should fuel the creation of more than a million new manufacturing jobs over the next ten years.  And then there is the savings to consumers when they are able to heat their homes and shower and laundry water for much less.  These aspects of low cost natural gas for the long-term, is expected to increase disposable income in the U.S., up to $2,000 per year for each household in the United States according to some industry predictors of the effects of the shale oil and gas boom.

Where we were previously importing a large percentage of our natural gas, we are now experiencing energy independence in this arena.  Natural gas in the U.S. is already near record low price levels due to the shale gas phenomenon.  This is very much a result of North America natural gas producers decoupling with the rest of the world in setting gas prices because of the tremendous increase in production.

Due to the boom in shale gas and oil, believe it or not, there may be more jobs in the near to long-term future than there are individuals to fill them.  There is an aging Baby Boomer generation out there reaching a retirement rate of 10,000 individuals per day.  Many of these workers-turning retirees have the important professional skills and trades needed for the tremendous increased workers needed in the new shale oil and gas energy sector.  Given the irresistible salaries for these positions, and the demand for these workers, many of these individuals may be convinced to continue their careers for a while longer.  After all, numerous retirement-age individuals saw a significant portion of their pensions, 401k and general retirement accounts melt-away in the financial sector collapse and resultant great recession beginning in 2007.

Demand should be consistent and significant for oil and gas field plumbers, welders, electricians, machinists and other skilled craft workers that do the actual deployment, installation and operation of the new shale oil and natural gas recovery equipment throughout the world.  In addition, the professional and scientific workforce should likewise see growth and demand for skilled individuals in areas such as engineering, science, math and computational disciplines, software and technology developers for the associated specialized jobs needed for the oil and gas shale drilling and recovery equipment.

Finding jobs in the multitude of this growing industry can be challenging if the employment seeker does not have specific training in these specialized fields.  Fortunately, there is new hope for those wanting to pursue a job in the fields of the future; that is if you live anywhere near the high-tech Silicon Valley area.  An initiative formulated by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group called SolarTech, in partnership with NOVA, has stepped forward to train “green job” hunters in their quest for landing employment for now and into the future.

The group is called the SolarTech Workforce Innovation Collaborative (SWIC). They are a broader and more advanced than many job training programs.  SWIC maintains ongoing and regular contact with the employers in the clean-tech industries in order to keep abreast of the constantly changing skill-sets and knowledge required.  Clean industry jobs are on a constant evolutionary path with new areas and disciplines being added on a regular basis.

SWIC is offering eight to ten week courses designed to get their graduates real and sustained employment in a multitude of green tech industries.  They are held at Bay Area community colleges such as Ohlone College in Fremont and Foothill College in Los Altos Hills.  As of this writing, over 250 individuals have gone through the program with over 120 being placed in good jobs throughout the area.  This program is in its infancy and the numbers of graduates are expected to increase dramatically in the weeks stretching into the spring and summer of 2012.

SWIC was able to establish its program as a result of a $4 million grant from California’s Employment Development Program.   Even though the funding is expected to end in June 2012, SWIC hopes to continue operations by private funding from the very companies they are helping supply a skilled workforce.   Employers appreciate the fact that the training program cuts down the expense and amount of time it takes to acquire specialized workers..

Taking a look at some of the students in the classes, we see large number of professionals who have been hit hard by the economic downturn.  These individuals are willing and eager to learn a new field with lots of employment potential into the future.  Some of the industries in demand and covered include home energy audits, solar sales and marketing, energy efficiency lighting and more.

Recently, an Energy Efficiency Workforce Symposium was held in Redwood City’s Canada College.  Many SWIC program graduates showed-up dressed in their best job-seeking suits.  This symposium gave employment seekers the opportunity to discuss in detail with employers the emerging industries surrounding green energy.   These types of job fairs get specific employers face-to-face with the potential employees in the area harboring the desired skills rather than the impersonal and lacking process of submitting resumes to some database in cyberspace.

Those considering a new field may want to avail themselves of the opportunity to learn and grow in an industry with no end in sight for the foreseeable future.   The SolarTech Workforce Innovations Collaborative (SWIC) is only one of six public-private partnerships funded by California’s Green Innovation Challenge program.  For more information on this program and the other six, visit the following site: http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/solar/swic/

Consistent and sustained growth has been occurring in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas.  The high-tech industries are leading the state of California in job gains. With numbers like these it should eventually have a ripple-down effect on other industries such as construction, retail and hospitality.

More than one half (58%) of all jobs created statewide in California during the month of March 2012 were created in the Bay Area. Hiring in the Bay Area has doubled in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the last quarter of 2011.  Back then, we were seeing approximately 6000 new jobs a month added in the last quarter of 2011, and almost 12,000 a month in the first quarter of 2012.

Looking at the Oakland East Bay area, the industries showing the greatest job growth in March were in the ever-strong health care industry with almost 1,900 jobs, leisure and hospitality showing 1,200 new jobs, and general professional services which includes science and technical sectors, adding 800 additional jobs in March.

California saw the addition of 18,200 total payroll jobs in March 2012, while the statewide jobless rate actually became worse at 11 percent from 10.9 percent the month previous. While unemployment rates remained unchanged in the general San Francisco are, they worsened in the East Bay and South Bay. The Metro San Francisco area jobless rate remained at 7.5 percent.

Analysts believe the seemingly bad rise in jobless rates statewide and in the Bay Area is in actually a positive sign.  The logic here is that unemployed workers who had previously given-up hope of finding a job are now back on the street looking for jobs once again; thereby fueling the increase in unemployment percentage.

So, what companies are hiring in the good old Silicon Valley for March?  According to a report from the Employment development Department, Labor Market Information Division, some very familiar names are in the pool of companies needing new blood.  Companies such as Google showed 870 jobs; Cisco Systems listed 1,482; Apple with 1,378; VMWare showing 856 new posted; and Kaiser Permanente with 1,048 positions needed.  These companies are offering employment as registered nurses, marketing managers, computer software application engineers, computer systems analysts, web developers, and software engineers and testers are those with the largest number of openings.

If you are looking for a vibrant job market, and you are qualified for some of these titles, head to the land of historic bridges, organic food and liberal lifestyles.

Much of this work overload has to do with the fact that more than 9 million workers have been laid-off by America businesses, forcing more productivity and longer hours from the remaining workforce in various ways.  Corporations and businesses feel the increased pressure of maintaining corporate profits and stock prices during a downturn in the overall economy.  This ended up falling on the backs of the workers who were forced to be more productive by working beyond their regular work-hours.

Some workers find they no longer qualify for overtime as a result of the misclassification of their job titles by their employers.  Other employees have found the company-issued smart phones with internet and email access, caused an obligatory environment to stay connected to their bosses and management, handling additional job duties while off-hours, sometimes late into the evening.  Some companies have resorted to a tactic of assigning simple hourly workers higher level titles such as assistant manager.  This boost to a management title causes the need to pay these employees overtime for additional hours disappear.  In reality, these fancy titles are only in name as the individuals may actually be doing more menial work typically performed by hourly staff.

The extended recession and economic downturn starting in 2007 has obviously placed much more pressure on companies to trim costs.  Unfortunately, much of the tendency of companies to pass the buck down to their employees has generated this wave of lawsuits. The response from corporate America is further causing a divide between employer/employee relations.  Some companies are retaliating by maintaining more stringent boundaries between management and the workforce.  They are turning back the clock and limiting employee perks such as company-issued Blackberries, smart phones and work privileges, such as the flexibility to remotely telecommute or work.

Given the fact the labor laws governing employer/employee relations date back to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), we can understand the need for revisiting the law for a modern age.  Today, interconnected communications devices open-up the potential for workers to do their work most anywhere.  Many employees appreciate the flexibility and time away from the office telecommuting allows.  But at what point does the workday end and personal time kick in?  In fact, the tremendous growth in employee labor lawsuits seems to give tremendous credence for this law’s need to be updated.

The problem has risen to the level of the Supreme Court, where they must listen to a class-action lawsuit this week regarding a large and well-known pharmaceutical company.  The company in this case has been accused of a long-time practice of misclassifying sales representatives as being exempt from overtime pay.  The employees in this case seem to have the backing of the U.S. Labor Department it’s interpretation of the FLSA. The payout in this case could be huge and cost the pharmaceutical company tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in back overtime pay.

The original Fair Labor Standards Act is found to state that all employees are to be paid overtime except for a select group.  That group being those more closely tied to management such as human resource professionals responsible for hiring and firing employees, key decision making administrators, lawyers and engineers.  There are also overtime exemptions for certain sales and IT workers who maintain hours that are complex to track.  All hourly employees are to receive overtime pay; also, employees receiving salaries can receive overtime if they don’t fall under any of the exceptions.

As these class-action suits can cost companies tens of millions of dollars and even more if they go to court, many companies are choosing to settle out of court.  Late in 2011 a large Silicon Valley software company settled out of court with over 1,600 technical analysts and software testers for $35 million.  These plaintiffs brought a lawsuit to this software giant stating that they were misclassified as professionals or administrators thereby not due overtime.

Unfortunately, labor relations and resultant niceties for employees are suffering from the rash of lawsuits.  In response to a labor lawsuit a few years ago, a huge nationwide computer company reclassified 7,000 hourly employees that were previously classified salaried workers.  These were technical and support workers making around $77,000 a year.  As a response, the company reduced the based salaries of these employees by 15% in order to compensate for the overtime they will now have to pay these newly classified workers.

Telecommuting, a typically enjoyable and effective solution for many employees, helping to balance work and family duties is also taking a hit.  In one survey of group of companies in 2011, 56% said they have curtailed the use of communications devices outside of the office.

Along with the stress of difficult recessionary times and previously unthought-of changes in technology comes conflict on how to evolve in light of laws from 1938.  We will have to see how the Supreme Court wrestles with these questions this week when they take-on the pharmaceutical class-action case.

These days, those severely wounded by the recession are the elderly.  Senior individual’s retirement plans simply are not good enough anymore given the trouble in the market.  Or their savings are drying up due to the consumption of their capital.  These older Americans may have experienced losses in the stock market during the economic crash that essentially wiped-out their retirement funds altogether.

There continues to be an inability for seniors—or any of the rest of us for that matter— to find an interest-bearing bank account with any substance. Just a few years ago, it was possible to find time-deposit accounts for CDs yielding interest rates of 5 or 6 percent or more.   Seniors with some quantitative lifetime retirement savings were able to at least make ends meet by supplementing their Social Security checks with those fairly decent rates.   Today, most interest rates for these accounts are hovering below 1 percent.  Seniors simply cannot find a path towards financial solvency with these rates and are many times forced to revisit the job market.

Add to this the fact that the Baby Boomer numbers are a tremendously large group of Americans as the post World War II crowd reaches their golden years.  Many employers prefer to hire older workers as they have experience and wisdom from many years of learning and growing.  For many service industry jobs they tend to be easier to train and more dependable.  We begin to see how a significant portion of the available jobs out there are going to older workers.

After the disappointing job report from the Labor Board last Friday, and almost three years after the job market reached its bottom in 2009, many are wondering if employment in American will ever be the same again.  Things were beginning to look-up as we experienced a pattern of several months of over 200,000 new jobs monthly.  Then this last month, we are once again hit by a reality check indicative from new job numbers for March 2012 at a disappointingly low 120,000.   Economists were surprised by these surprisingly low figures and the nation once again is in a state of let-down.  The hopes of a sustained and vibrant job recovery seem to be dashed once again.

With a previously little thought-of slice of new jobs going to Baby Boomer senior Americans and the total job creation lower than expected for March 2012, many are wondering, where are the jobs for graduating college students and the rest of us?  Moreover, many are asking, how is America going to recover from these tough times?

As a nation, and as one collective group focused on solidarity, America has pulled through numerous tough times in its checkered past.  In these times of uncertainty, we simply must build off of our past collective strength and realize that we have the fortitude and resolve in this country that transcends far beyond our economic problems.  We all need to come to the realization that it will take each of us doing our part—in a spirit of almost wartime cohesion— to ensure our future prosperity.  Many of us are not looking at this situation with the certainty of our past recovery from troubled times, but rather with a focus on the present negativity and an attitude of waiting on the government to cast its magic spell for job creation.  Unfortunately negativity is not at all productive and actually fuels self-fulfilling prophecy and brings with it a further downward spiral.

When tough times come, it is usually an opportunity, and an indication for those affected to change direction.  Out of necessity, minds are sparked, new technology and fields of growth open-up as an entrepreneurial and inventive spirit is embraced.

Out of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover’s administration consigned the building of Hoover Dam.  Franklin D. Roosevelt struck the New Deal creating a hallmark American social safety net, the Social Security System.  From the dregs of the Depression the WPA was formed, and employed 2 to 3 million unemployed and unskilled laborers that built 7,800 bridges and 700,000 miles of roads to spur the nationwide, interconnected highway and road network.

When it looked like the world was going to fall to Fascism in the 1940s America entered the war.  With housewives on factory lines and men in uniform, we built the largest war machine in history, and in the shortest period of time.  Our nation rationed food, tires, metal and other supplies and put all of its focus on the war effort.  We were called to duty and we were significantly instrumental in turning the tide of the hostilities, securing the freedom of the world with our resolve, technology, innovation and pure stubborn drive.

We need to call on the seniors of this great country who are now returning to the work force, who may have seen and been through some of those tough times of the past to help inspire our youth in the art of survival and unmitigated obstinacy to never give up and forge forward with a new resolve.  Perhaps the relating of those stories of tough and difficult times and the way a new path was forged, told to younger colleagues and those working alongside senior workers will cause a new generation to rise to the occasion.

We all need to do our part to instill and set into motion a new mentality of strength, creativity and most of all—hope!  The turmoil of the past can be our guide as we navigate the future.  Let’s get busy and build another Hoover Dam.

From a Reuters survey, it looks like the unemployment rate is standing steady at 8.3% for the third straight month in a row.  Add to this that approximately 203,000 jobs were added in March with total payrolls improving 227,000 in February.  These figures are all for the non-farm sector of business and we are still waiting for the official results from the labor department on Friday.

These are sustained non-farm job growth figures we have not seen since 1999.  With the economy of the country hanging in the balance and the long-term effects on the lives of millions who have lost their jobs in the last few years, it looks like there is finally reason to have real hope.

Even though the job growth is proceeding, the Fed Chairman has been thought to embrace the possibility of further monetary easing due to weak economic growth figures over the past several months.  With these anticipated positive employment signs, it looks like the Federal Reserve is not very likely to change its lending policies with added monetary stimulus.

According to some economists, if these figures are confirmed by the Labor Department on Friday, and the last three month job growth rate manages to be sustained long-term, it could mean the return to levels of employment found only prior to the recession, and obtainable sometime as early as the first part of 2014.

Some of the decline of the unemployment rate has to do with the declining labor force participation rate figures which are at a 29 year low.  The jobless rate may remain just slightly above 8% even by the end of the year due in large part to those who have previously given-up their search for work finds new hope in the positive unemployment figures and start on a trek of returning to the job market.

In desiring to close on a positive note, from the Reuters survey workers average earnings seem to be on the rise by 0.2 percent.  Additionally, the major growth in jobs appears to once again be in the manufacturing and construction sectors which had been so deeply hit by the recession.  While experts attribute much of this to the unseasonably warm winter of 2012, the fact of the matter is, we are gaining jobs in all of the right places.

While America has been through one of the worst recessions in history, we are certain to prevail as we fight our way back and most importantly, “never give up.”  America is a strong, resilient and vibrant nation with unlimited potential.  As Clint Eastwood so famously reminded us on the Super bowl game commercial:  “Yeah, it’s halftime America, and our second half is about to begin.”

The warehouses are full, trucks are moving in and out and they can’t seem to find enough workers to fulfill all of the employment opportunities in the logistic field in this city. In fact, the local community college has received a grant for the expressed purpose of attracting and training individuals in the logistics field.  To top this off, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce has put on a job fare at the community college for finding talented and prospective hires for this booming field.

It seems Columbus is ideally and centrally located for the effective and efficient distribution of products throughout the country.  It is considered at a crossroads for shipping and logistics in that it has superior ground, air and rail infrastructure and facilities all converging all in one place.  Add to this the fact that Columbus has an international Airport that is entirely dedicated to cargo traffic.

A company called ODW Logistics had empty warehouses just three months ago.  Today, the facility is full and there are job openings for as many as 30 employees. As it turns out, 80 percent of local logistics companies have indicated they plan to hire more staff in 2012.

Columbus is in a logistics hiring phenomenon and you can take part.  The jobs range from entry level warehouse worker, pick and pack order fulfillment workers, fork lift operators, truck drivers, and all the way to operations leads and management positions.  Get your computer fired-up and start your resume submission today to get back in the job market.