Despite continued widespread job losses across industries and a dim outlook for near-term employment, we are beginning to see more hopeful perspectives on future job openings and the skilled workers needed to fill those positions.

Joblessness So Far
The United States economy lost 651,000 jobs in February, the fourth consecutive month in which job losses were near or over 600,000. Last month’s slide brought the unemployment rate up to 8.1 percent — the highest it has been since 1983. Job losses were widespread across industries. Only education and health services reported job gains.

Goods-producing industries shed 276,000 jobs in February, while services lost 375,000. Construction employment fell by 104,000 last month and the industry has shed 904,000 jobs since the recession began. Other large job losses in February occurred in transportation, financial services, and retail and wholesale trade.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the economy has dropped 4.4 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, with more than half of those positions — some 2.6 million — disappearing in the last four months alone.

“This rapid deterioration has prompted talk that some industries are being partly dismantled,” the New York Times says. In February, 168,000 more manufacturing jobs were eliminated, bringing losses over the last year to 1.2 million.

U.S. Employment Outlook
A separate survey, the Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), showed that hiring expectations in the manufacturing and service sectors will continue to diminish in March as “an already-anemic labor market will provide fewer opportunities for job seekers.”

Among the key LINE survey findings:

• Hiring is down in March by two-thirds in the manufacturing sector and one-third in the service sector compared with 2008;
• Fewer employers are actively recruiting, and those who are searching for top-level talent are having little, if any, problems finding it; and
• New-hire compensation (wages and benefits) in both the manufacturing and service sectors rose at the slowest rate in March in four years.

Some economists anticipate we could lose 2 million more jobs before the trend starts turning around, threatening to bring the unemployment rate up to 9 percent or even 10 percent.

Most economists now “assume American fortunes cannot improve before the last months of the year, as the Obama administration’s $787 billion emergency spending program begins to wash through the economy,” the New York Times notes. The Federal Reserve doesn’t expect the unemployment rate to fall below 7 percent until 2011.

Lean Companies Cutting Hours Instead Of Jobs
“While mass layoffs have driven the U.S. unemployment rate to its highest in 26 years,” the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports, some companies “are responding to the slump in more surgical ways, mainly by cutting hours and shedding temporary workers.”

The selective cuts “help explain a curiosity of this recession,” the Journal claims:

The manufacturing sector is suffering a sharp contraction and has had to slash many jobs — some 1.3 million, according to a Labor Department jobs report released Friday. But fewer positions have been eliminated than would be expected given the depth of the slump.

The sheer “speed of this downturn, and the fact that it hit many manufacturers after the economy as a whole was officially in recession, may have muted layoffs. A good chunk of the factory sector was still humming along until late last year, aided in part by strong exports. Manufacturers may also be trying to hold on to workers as long as possible, in the hope that business revives.”

In addition, “streamlined production and technological improvements also mean fewer jobs need to be cut in a downturn” and “another factor saving jobs thus far is smaller inventories.”

Where the Jobs Are
If you want an upbeat take on this news, check out a new Daily News column about last week’s New York City job fair at the Marriott Marquee. Turns out, everyone there was still optimistic.

The Dallas Federal Reserve‘s portion of the Beige Book, the Fed’s compilation of regional economic reports, claims that “a number of firms reported that they have reduced employment and/or frozen hiring to keep operations lean in preparation for the possibility of slower activity.”

Still:

[T]here are firms reporting that activity is being restrained by labor shortages, particularly for skilled workers, such as certified mechanics, engineers and those who support the energy industry. Upward wage pressures have eased in some industries but continue to be reported in others. Temporary service firms said pay rates have been pushed up because of shortages of white collar and executive talent. Shipping firms said the shortage of talent has pushed wages up by 5 percent.

Likewise, Newsweek has come out with a list of where people are still hiring. Among the “recession-resistant” jobs:

• National security — especially new positions being created by the Transit Security Administration;
• Green business — particularly in solar and wind energy, and energy efficiency in general, under an administration focused on clean energy initiatives;
• Health care — including nursing, medical assistants, physician assistants, home health aides, medical records and health information technicians, as well as physical and occupational therapists; and
• Education — 2.9 million teachers are expected to be needed over the next eight years, with many additional workers needed to ensure these teachers succeed — including principals, headmasters and independent consultants to monitor education and the sales professionals in charge of creating, updating and distributing textbooks and other educational materials.

New Skills Certification System for Job Preparation
Toward fulfilling the apparent labor shortages reported by the Dallas Fed, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and The Manufacturing Institute last week launched a new Manufacturing Skills Certification System that “will revolutionize education and training for the 21st-century manufacturing workforce,” according to NAM president and CEO John Engler.

The system will initially focus on core, basic skills required for entry-level workers in all sectors of manufacturing, from alternative energy and computers to aerospace and life-saving pharmaceuticals. The core skills include personal effectiveness competencies, academic competencies, workplace competencies and industry-wide technical competencies.

The new system of skills certifications maps to both career pathways across the manufacturing economy and to educational pathways in post-secondary education. These pathways will be deployed through community colleges to provide students and transitioning workers with industry-recognized skills certifications that are educational credentials with real value in the workplace, NAM said.

Job Stimulus in China
While the Bank of England took unprecedented steps Thursday to prevent a deflationary spiral — launching a program to effectively print money through the purchase of billions of pounds worth of corporate and government bonds and voting to cut the bank rate to the lowest level in the central bank’s 315-year history (0.5 percent) — China’s Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to bolster Beijing’s economy and increase outlays on social programs.

In the keynote opening address to the National People’s Congress (NPC), whose annual legislative session — billed as one of the most important events on the Chinese political calendar — kicked off Thursday, “Wen reiterated a pledge that China will meet its 8 percent growth target this year and said it will use tax and fiscal policies to support exports,” according to MarketWatch.

The government, he added, would stick to the framework of its earlier $585 billion stimulus commitment while bolstering spending on social programs and accelerating reform of the pension and medical systems.”

“The key items on the NPC’s nine-day agenda are measures to boost the economy and create jobs amid a surge in layoffs,” MarketWatch reports. “Factory workers have been among the hardest hit by the recent slump, as plants have scaled back or shuttered production in the wake of a collapse in global demand for Chinese exports.”

In the keynote address, Wen stated that steps would be taken to contain urban unemployment below 4.6 percent through the creation of 9 million city jobs.