Is the jobs drought ending?

Surprisingly good employment figures show losses slowing. But when will the jobs come back?

The unemployment rate inched down to 10 percent in November as the U.S. economy lost a mere 11,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. The government also revised its October figures, putting job losses for that month at 111,000 instead of 190,000. But the record numbers of Americans facing long-term unemployment continued to rise, from 5.6 million in October to 5.9 million in November. Is the unemployment crisis easing, or is the pain just beginning? (Watch a CBS report about U.S. job creation)

The jobs crisis is ending: "The bad days for jobs are very close to being over," says Floyd Norris in The New York Times. The "sheer abruptness of the decline in employment" made most companies extremely lean. Now that the recession is over ("Yes, I think it's over") they "may need to add workers quickly for even a small increase in business."

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