• “the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.4 percent”
• “the average monthly job loss for May through July (-331,000) was about half the average decline for November through April (-645,000)”
• “nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in July (-247,000)”

The last item actually appears first in the original source, but I list it last so I can remark that this is the lowest monthly job loss in quite some time. The ongoing trend that things are not as bad as they were before is continuing, though we’re still losing rather than gaining jobs.

Not all the items in this report are necessarily cheery, however. Here are some that might give pause to the inevitable thoughts about recovery, and let us know how far we have to go to regain equilibrium and move beyond into true economic and job growth:

• “the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 584,000 over the month to 5.0 million”
• “in July, 1 in 3 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more”
• Table A-11 indicates that unemployment in the “information” industry stands at 11.5 percent (as compared to 4.1 percent in July 2008), and in the “professional and business services” industry stands at 10.9 percent (as compared to 6.1 percent in July 2008) Table B-4 indicates that average hourly earnings in Information declined by 0.5 percent, and increased in Professional and Business Sevices by 0.2 percent.

What does all this mean? With a total of 15 million Americans still unemployed, things remain tough all over, particularly in IT, where things are somewhat worse than they are overall. It’s still time to sit tight, stay put, and keep an eye out for trouble heading your way. Hopefully all the talk about and longing for recovery will translate into tangible signs of same soon.

In the past month, some interesting things have started happening:

1. I’ve been contacted by several recruiters and hiring managers, all from or representing reputable mid-sized to large companies. Nobody’s tried to low-ball me on salaries or rates, either, much to my extreme surprise.
2. My volume of freelance work is starting to pick up appreciably all of a sudden. In the past 30 days, I’ve kicked off nearly half-a-dozen new projects, and have brought four significant new customers online. The pace of work from existing customers is picking up dramatically, too, and I’ve had several calls recently from editors with whom I’d stopped working for a while to let me know that new work is (or could be) in the pipeline.
3. There’s enough going on, in fact, that I’ve re-hired one of my former co-workers and associates to act as a full-time project manager to help me keep things flowing and under control. I’ve learned the hard way that without somebody to keep an eye on deadlines, deliverables, and quality, when the pace of work gets really frenetic far too much can go by the wayside, if not left entirely behind in the rush and crush.

Coupled with a recent uptick in global markets, improved consumer confidence levels, and the onset of the influx of government stimulus spending, I’m strongly tempted to observe that things show some signs of improvement. I still think it’s too early to talk about a turnaround or upward trends in employment, markets, and business, but it’s very nice to see some positive indicators popping up in my immediate neighborhood.

I can only hope my friends and colleagues in IT are seeing similar signs in their professional neighborhoods and situations as well. If so, please share those observations by commenting on this blog post; if not, share your impressions and observations to the contrary instead. At this tentative stage of the game, I’m all ears, in full-blown “listening mode” if not outright “hoping for the best mode!” If you have some light to shed on these topics, please beam some my way…