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.

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.

It’s been a long hard struggle to get good grades, burn the mid-night oil to pass the Bar and become a Lawyer. After what seems like an age of being buried under a mountain of Law Journals and case studies you emerge into the real world and realize that all that hard work was not quite enough! The slow economy, job and budget cuts have affected the availability of jobs even for Lawyers.

It is a time for shifting demands and people who have adapted to this new world are doing very well indeed. Lawyers who show an entrepreneurial spirit and a willingness to work for smaller Law firms are doing brisk business and building up a portfolio rich in experience. Right now the best advice is to follow the money.