The number of new people signing up for unemployment benefits is at a three-year low, bringing huge relief to Americans across the country as the job market continues to stabilize. Labor department numbers indicate the number of claims filed at 348,000; the lowest since March 2008. That was a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week and this is the fourth decrease in five weeks. The economy has added more than 200,000 jobs over the last three months. The numbers indicate that lesser people are being laid-off, while hiring is picking up pace. It is still important to note that 13 million people are still unemployed and the unemployment rate of 8.3 percent is still relatively high. The only area of concern in consumer spending, people are still cautious about spending and it should increase as the job market continues to strengthen.

“The numbers add to the belief that the economy is shifting gears. There is just no number that is giving us a whole lot of trouble, except for consumer spending,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania.

A new jobs bill has been proposed, which will make it mandatory for U.S companies to disclose the number people employed abroad. The sponsor of the bill is Rep. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan. Until now, companies disclosed the number of people on their payrolls in entirety, but never broke-down the data. The new bill will ask companies to provide information regarding the number of employees Country-wise, in the U.S; the information will have to be provided State-wise.

Within the framework of the current rules, huge multi-national corporations like Apple and IBM have kept such data confidential. The Outsourcing Accountability Act, H.R. 3875 would direct firms with revenue over 1 Billion to classify such data. Companies would also have to keep a track of the increase or decrease in percentage of jobs.

In an optimistic development new claims for unemployment benefits in the United States fell more than expected last week. That is to say that 12,000 fewer people or only 367,000 people filed initial claims for state unemployment benefits. This continues a general slowing of the rate at which people are being laid off and may mean that businesses are finally at a point where they have fewer superfluous staff and a step up in hiring may be around the corner. Economists see the 400,000 mark for initial filing of unemployment benefits as the dividing line between an improving and deteriorating labor market, as the four week moving average has been at 375,750 this is another positive indication.

Job growth has gained momentum and the unemployment rate is at a three year low of 8.5 percent as of December 2011. The number of people receiving benefits under regular state programs is at 3.437 million for the week ending January 21; this is the lowest it has been since September 2008. A separate Labor Department report shows that growth productivity in U.S. nonfarm productivity slowed in the fourth quarter, this is another indicator that current staff is working at maximum productivity and an uptake in demand may lead to hiring.

Jobless claims in America dropped drastically in December last year as reports of 200,000 new jobs being added also surfaced in the media. The economic turmoil of 2008-2009 had left a bitter aftertaste with Obama’s election to the presidential office especially after his high hopes of job creation and curtailment of off shoring of jobs. However, with most companies becoming financially buoyant due to stimulus and a changed perspective of management during crisis, the job situation is looking bright and America seems to be headed ‘in the right direction’ to exactly quote Mr. Obama in this context.

Cloud Computing is touted as the next big thing by technology companies and for a reason. It is not only changing the nature of jobs within the Information Technology department of companies, but also in other functions of an organization.

Senior-level executives, primarily chief information officers, see the transformation as an inference of the strategic role that IT plays in shaping businesses. From a business point of view it offers a solid and reliable supporting technology.

More often than not, ex-employees of big enterprises like GE and Yahoo! end up setting competitor companies after years of having gained expertise at their former place of employment. So why is this trend increasingly building its pace much to the woes of these big shot companies? The answer probably is deeper than asserting the new age entrepreneurial spirit. The actual answer may lie in understanding the treatment meted out to these employees who leave to begin an enterprise of their own.

The world is getting smaller with the rise of information and communication technology and this has affected the job market in a big way. The flow of knowledge and skills the opening of markets globally has meant that the future of employment and employable skills has altered drastically. There are whole industry’s today that did not exist just a decade ago. Technology has advanced to form a whole new world of social networking, video telephony and mobile offices.

So it’s very difficult to predict what the future holds and what skills will be in demand tomorrow. A decade ago it was believed that low skilled white collar jobs like data processing were all that could be shipped off shore, but today more high skill work such as accounting, patent law, routine reading of x rays are all being shipped to places with an abundance of less expensive, highly skilled, English speaking workers.

The world is getting smaller with the rise of information and communication technology and this has affected the job market in a big way. The flow of knowledge and skills the opening of markets globally has meant that the future of employment and employable skills has altered drastically. There are whole industry’s today that did not exist just a decade ago. Technology has advanced to form a whole new world of social networking, video telephony and mobile offices.