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U.S. economy

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As discussed in my last post, the first three quarters of 2010 saw positive developments in hiring, and CareerBuilder and USA Today’s Q4 Job Forecast expects that trend to continue, with 21% of employers reporting that they plan to hire additional full-time permanent employees during the fourth quarter. Although the fact that employers are hiring is in itself a positive development, employers have, since the economy began to recover from the trauma of the recession, hired only with the greatest reluctance (for example, see my previous post, A conundrum in the age of long-term unemployment). As one Wall Street Journal contributor recently put it, before hiring help, employers “want to keep squeezing as much output from their current workers as they can.” Even though this quarter’s findings should by no means be scoffed at, this trend of limited hiring—given that despite the fact that many businesses and segments of the economy are experiencing some growth, because the global economy has not fully stabilized, such are still not actively hiring—has affected workers.

While different economic indicators continue to paint contrasting pictures of the healthiness of the U.S. and European economies, leading…