A Fragile Recovery Blossoming with Hope

There are people who hold their breath when good news arrives because they believe bad news may be right around the corner. They're not wrong -- but holding their breath isn't going to prevent the next piece of news (good or bad) from unfolding.

Finally, the unemployment rate is headed in the right direction. Finally, the recovery includes more jobs created than jobs lost.

The recovery is fragile -- there is no doubt about that. The earthquake, tsunami and growing nuclear crisis in Japan are going to bring long-term changes and have consequences beyond the terrible cost to lives and families. But even in the midst of disaster, the Nikkei 225 continued with business as usual despite plummeting more than 10% in one day.

The hopeful part of a recession, downturn or disaster is that recovery will come. Recovery in the U.S. job market is also slowly blossoming with possibilities. According to the US Department of Labor, only three states are currently at their all-time high for unemployment: Colorado, Georgia and Idaho. California, Florida, and Nevada have dropped ever so slightly from their all-time high unemployment rates in December 2010.

In some states, the news is actually quite good. In North Carolina, unemployment has dropped from 11.4% to 9.9% in the past year. And eleven states have unemployment rates under 7%: Hawaii (6.3%), Iowa (6.1%), Kansas (6.8%), Minnesota (6.7%), Nebraska (4.2%), New Hampshire (5.6%), North Dakota (3.8%), Oklahoma (6.6%), South Dakota (4.7%), Vermont (5.7%), and Wyoming (6.3%). This is hugely encouraging for a recovery.

One of the saddest statistics of The Great Recession was the number of workers who gave up looking for work because they lost any hope of ever getting back on their feet. The past few years have indeed been an extremely difficult time for the unemployed and underemployed.

But the good news, as a new batch of graduates nears their final quarters or semesters of classes, is the job market is coming back. The question won't be will there be jobs, but instead "Will job seekers know where to discover the openings?"

On March 23, the brand new Creating Job Security Resource Guide - 2nd Edition comes out with 130+ hot job resources. Still easy-to-navigate, this new edition includes sharper tools, new job websites and insight from both experts and job seekers who have used the guide to land their dream jobs and are back to help others do the same.