This week, to my surprise and delight, the filings turned out even better. At 366,000 they’re down an additional 19,000 from the preceding week, and definitely trending in the right direction. This not only beat economists’ forecasts, it’s also the lowest number of filings since May 2008 according to US Labor Department figures released yesterday in our nation’s capital (that’s five months after the last recession officially began, so we still have a ways to go to get back to the previous “normal”).

Manufacturing is also up, after a slight pause for the month of November. Economists are starting to talk about the US economy “gathering momentum” (see this San Francisco Chronicle story “Unemployment claims filings hit 3-year low” for more info and attribution of the just-quoted phrase).

Maybe it’s just the holidays lifting everybody’s spirits and consumer confidence. But hey: could this really be a glimmer of hope for genuine improvement? Only time will tell!

Let me explain: Jim and I are both well-educated, white males with advanced degrees and 20-plus years of experience in the job market, with about 20 years of executive level experience between the two of us. In case you didn’t already know that makes it darn difficult for either of us to find work, especially work with pay commensurate with our years of experience and the few gray hairs we have left.

But finding work we are. Jim left his job recently and was expecting it to take a year or more to find a VP-level position, or higher, at a local company in the Austin area that meets his now very well-developed sense of what makes a good potential employer, and an equally good potential job. Much to his surprise — and mine — he finds himself pondering multiple at least tolerable job offers at decent-to-better-than that companies, and is even mulling over a few more entreprenuerial opportunities as well.

As for myself, in the past couple of weeks I’ve had so much work come knocking on my door that I’ve had to turn a handful of jobs away simply for lack of bandwidth and resources to service them. And let me be clear: I’m not looking for full-time employment right now, though I would certainly consider any good offers that might be tendered in my direction anyway.

Though neither of these situations is typical, or perhaps even ordinary, these days, I can’t help but find my optimism perked up by these occasional rays of economic sunshine in what has been a pretty dreary landscape until recently. Given all the work I know of out there, and the gradual reawakening of some go-go mentality, I don’t think I’m wrong to see some signs of improvement, no matter how slim and evanescent they may turn out to be. Buck up: it could definitely be worse!