While the pace of job losses has declined dramatically, we haven’t turned the corner yet.

The job market remained in a deep funk in December, according to a government report Friday showing that employers view the economic recovery as too weak and too fragile to begin hiring again on any large scale.

The pace of layoffs has slowed sharply in recent months, but businesses still cut 85,000 net jobs in December, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 10 percent, but economists suspect this is only because hundreds of thousands of frustrated workers stopped looking for jobs.

The key is that the trend in is the right direction. The recovery is going to be a little choppy, but hopefully the trend continues in the right direction. If you’re unemployed, the key is to continue being persistent. Don’t give up!

If you’re a small business owner or a manager in a larger company, this is the question you should be asking yourself. Many of us had to make tough decisions at the beginning of the recession, and now with a possible recovery on the horizon we need to re-examine those decisions.

It may not feel like it yet in your town or in your industry, but there are indications that things are getting better. After a year or more of hunkering down, it is probably a good time to consider what the recession has done to your business and your industry. At some point, whether now or in a few months, business owners are going to have to switch from playing defense to playing offense.

For many of us, hiring freezes, layoffs, salary reductions and furloughs have helped us survive, but they have probably caused collateral damage to the psyche and bank accounts of our employees. Most of them went along with the program because they understood and because they had few options. But those options are coming. More companies are going to start to hire again. This should mean several things to business owners.

I suspect that many entrepreneurs have figured this out already. You have to be nimble in business, and making quick adjustments is critical to success.

This also bodes well for anyone looking for a job. Circle back to the leads you followed six or even three months ago and see if their situation has changed. You might find opportunities where they didn’t exist before as more companies start to play offense again.

As technology becomes cheaper and more powerful, an entrepreneur can have a very profitable business without having any employees. This has always been true for many professionals, but now it applies to many more people. For example, many lawyers had to rely upon secretaries in the past. Yet now you can learn how to use a powerful word processing program and there’s no need for staff. With today’s tough economic conditions, it’s likely this trend is accelerating, as many people are finding ways to pay the bills by offering up their services on an independent contractor basis in lieu of finding a new job.

As pointed out in Forbes, this new trend is making it more difficult to get accurate employment statistics.

Steinberg works 30 to 40 hours a week. But along with millions of other contractors, she may not show up on the radar of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles unemployment statistics by surveying households and counting pay stubs. No one knows how many freelancers, part-timers and consultants there are–the Government Accountability Office took a stab in 2006, guesstimating that the group made up 30% of all workers–much less how many escape the notice of the BLS. “It’s difficult to track, and is often misclassified or not accounted for by the Department of Labor,” says Sarah Horowitz, director of the Freelancers Union in Brooklyn, N.Y. One thing is certain: The shape of the so-called informal economy is changing.

For some, this obviously involves unreported income, yet I suspect that’s not true for most of the new entrepreneurs. Many of them want to work at home, do something they love or want the freedom of being their own boss. In many cases they are selling goods and services that aren’t purchased on a cash basis, so hiding income really isn’t an option. Also, many people want to have a legitimate business that they can grow, and worrying about hiding income from the IRS is not part of the plan.

Some like Scott Shane are concerned by this trend.

Myth: The total number of businesses created is what matters, not the types of businesses that are being created.

Reality: I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in what entrepreneurship in America is becoming. Over the past decade, we have been creating more non-employer businesses and fewer employer businesses per capita. (Employer businesses are companies that the Census Bureau reports have at least one employee; non-employer businesses have no employees.) As a result, the employer business share of the total businesses has slipped four percentage points since 1997, from 26.4% of the total in 1997 to 22.4% in 2007 (see figure to the right). Moreover, there is nothing in the data to suggest that this trend is going to reverse itself anytime soon.

Why am I concerned about this trend? Non-employer businesses aren’t the source of job or wealth creation that employer businesses are, which means the U.S. economy doesn’t benefit as much from them. By definition, non-employer businesses don’t create any jobs, and their sales and profits are quite low. So low, in fact, that the Census Bureau’s 2002 Survey of Business Owners indicated that only 44% of non-employer businesses were the primary source of income for their owners.

To boot, non-employer businesses’ are becoming less substantial over time. According to Census data, the average revenues at these firms have declined about 12% in real terms since 2000, when they were less than $50,000 per year to begin with.

Of course you’d rather have businesses that hire plenty of employees, but that doesn’t mean one-person operations don’t have a net positive effect on the economy. First, it provides a lucrative and appealing option for many people. It offers them a lifestyle that they might not be able to achieve working for a company, and it allows many to do something they love as well. That’s a good thing. Also, these small business offer services that other companies value. In many instances they can offer better services for a better price as they don’t have overhead and can be very efficient with today’s technology. Again, more efficiency helps the overall economy and lowers prices for everyone.

Small operations also unleash creativity, as people working for themselves are very motivated and aren’t constrained by the bureaucracy of a larger organization. Imagine where the Internet would be today without these types of entrepreneurs.

Finally, some of these one-person operations will grow and perhaps lead to larger companies with employees, or at least relationships with other service providers.

We should focus on measuring this trend better, but in many ways this can be a net plus for the growth of a modern, dynamic economy.

If you’re looking for an executive position, don’t be surprised if your prospective employer wants you to go through a “tryout” or trail period before committing to a permanent position. BusinessWeek reports the practice of hiring executives on an interim basis is becoming more common.

At one time or another all executives have experienced that special horror—the moment when they realize they’ve hired the wrong person. For Justin Moore, the revelation came during his chief financial officer’s first week on the job. As Moore, CEO of Axcient, a data storage company in Mountain View, Calif., was scrawling out scenarios at the whiteboard, he started to feel as if he were pulling the new guy up a hill. “I was constantly having to lead him into a high-level discussion and say, ‘Come on, get high-level again. Let’s think more strategy here.’”

Moore had an out. Like a number of executives, he has scotched standard operating procedure in favor of a new hiring strategy: trying before buying. Once Moore finds a potential candidate, he auditions him or her before making a permanent offer. Sometimes tryouts last weeks, sometimes months. Why get married after only a few dates? “It’s foolish of any of us to think our interview skills are so great we can predict how well someone is going to work in terms of the dynamics of a team,” says Moore.

The idea of interim executives also has some benefits for the employee. In today’s world of instant information, you can wait to update your LinkedIn profile until the job becomes permanent.

This was originally proposed in the first stimulus package but was then removed. It looks like there would be bi-partisan support, and given the terrible job market, it seems like a workable idea.

The idea of a tax credit for companies that create new jobs, something the federal government has not tried since the 1970s, is gaining support among economists and Washington officials grappling with the highest unemployment in a generation.

The proposal has some bipartisan appeal among politicians eager both to help their unemployed constituents and to encourage small-business development. Legislators on Capitol Hill and President Obama’s economic team have been quietly researching the policy for several weeks.

“There is a lot of traction for this kind of idea,” said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip. “If the White House will take the lead on this, I’m fairly positive it would be welcomed in a bipartisan fashion.”

The New York Times article does a good job of explaining the pros and cons. Hopefully some form of this will pass.

I’m a big fan of Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard when he’s speaking about entrepreneurship – not so much when he discusses politics or macro economics. So, if you want to start a business, start reading Rich regularly. If you wanted a hint of the economic collapse that occurred last fall, you wouldn’t have been tipped off by Rich.

That said, here’s an interesting idea. Many in this country unfortunately believe that we need to restrict immigration to the United States for talented and educated people, as they might take jobs away from Americans. The truth is that we always have a need for more talented people, and these people usually create even more jobs, either by starting businesses or making their employers more competitive.

When the Blue State Obama Administration thinks of small business, it undoubtedly dreams of promising startups churning out solar panels for office buildings or turbine blades for windmills. If its dreams are serious, the Administration should get behind a crackling good idea proposed by entrepreneur Paul Graham. It’s called the Founder Visa, and the idea is to make it easy for the world’s entrepreneurs to come to the U.S. As Paul Kedrosky describes it on the Web site Growthology: “The particulars are still getting worked through, but it has to do with getting a modicum of [private] funding ($250,000) and approval from an independent board that this represents a real startup deal, not some back-room finagling for a visa, and that’s it: You’re in the country and you’re off and running.”

You can never have too many good entrepreneurs. This is a great idea.

Many people dream of starting their own business, but many Americans are now doing it out of necessity given the realities of the high unemployment rate.

Call them accidental entrepreneurs, unintended entrepreneurs or forced entrepreneurs. A year and a half into the Great Recession, with the jobless rate hovering near double digits, corporate refugees like Lisa Marie Grillos of San Francisco are trying to fend for themselves.

Along with her brother Hernan Barangan, Mrs. Grillos started Hambone Designs, after her full-time contract position with Williams-Sonoma as a production manager wasn’t renewed in January. The new company makes bicycle bags that hold things like keys, wallets and cellphones.

“You have the time — why not focus your energy on something, rather than just trolling Craigslist and sitting and watching TV?” Mrs. Grillos says. “It’s really taking matters in my own hands.”

The Times article goes on to describe this trend further, and cites data from LegalZoom.com regarding a 10% increase in new businesses formed using its service in the first half of 2009, which surprised the company’s executives.

In many ways, a recession offers an ideal time to start a business. Many costs are lower, from rent to staff.

The recent article in the Washington Post is quite fascinating, particularly for someone like myself who started a virtual business ten years ago with home computers and an organizational meeting at Panera’s.

Frank Gruber’s workstation at AOL in Dulles could be in any cubicle farm from here to Bangalore — push-pin board for reminders, computer on Formica desk, stifling fluorescent lighting. It’s so drab there’s nothing more to say about it, which is why the odds of finding Gruber there are slim.

Instead, Gruber often works at Tryst in Adams Morgan, at Liberty Tavern in Clarendon, at a Starbucks, in hotel lobbies, at the Library of Congress, on the Bolt Bus to New York or, as he did last week, beside the rooftop pool of the Hilton on Embassy Row. Gruber and Web entrepreneur Jen Consalvo turned up late one morning, opened their Mac laptops, connected to WiFi and began working. A few feet away, the pool’s water shimmered like hand-blown glass.

“I like the breeze,” Consalvo said, working all the while.

Gruber and Consalvo are digital nomads. They work — clad in shorts, T-shirts and sandals — wherever they find a wireless Web connection to reach their colleagues via instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and occasionally by voice on their iPhones or Skype. As digital nomads, experts say, they represent a natural evolution in teleworking. The Internet let millions of wired people work from home; now, with widespread WiFi, many have cut the wires and left home (or the dreary office) to work where they please — and especially around other people, even total strangers.

For nomads, the benefits are both primitive and practical.

Primitive: Tom Folkes, an artificial intelligence programmer, worked last week at the Java Shack in Arlington County because he’s “an extrovert working on introvert tasks. If I’m working at home by myself, I am really hating life. I need people.” He has a coffee shop rotation. “I spread my business around.”

Practical: Marilyn Moysey, an Ezenia employee who sells virtual collaboration software, often works at Panera Bread near her home in Alexandria even though she has an office in the “boondocks.” Why? “Because there is no hope for the road system around here,” she said. Asked where her co-workers were, Moysey said, “I don’t know, because it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Nomad life is already evolving. Nomads who want the feel of working with officemates have begun co-working in public places or at the homes of strangers. They work laptop-by-laptop in living rooms and coffee shops, exchanging both idle chitchat and business advice with people who all work for different companies. The gatherings are called jellies, after a bowl of jelly beans the creators were eating when they came up with the name.

All of this makes sense, including the last part regarding co-working with others. The freedom of working from home, or from any spot you select for that matter, is very rewarding. It’s liberating to break free from the arbitrary work schedule imposed on you by your employer. On the other hand, you learn quickly that some level of self-discipline is critical.

Depending on your personality, however, one can begin to miss the daily interactions with other people. particularly friends at the office. So it’s not too surprising to hear how some decide to congregate and work side-by-side.

This brings up another topic critical for many who decide to work from home when starting a new business. Networking is critical to success, but it can also be important simply from a lifestyle and job satisfaction point of view. Many of us need to get out there, and sometimes it’s too easy to spend day after day at home. It’s not a recipe for success.

Finally, if any of this intrigues you, please check out the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. I’ll have much more to say about this in later posts, but Tim is a pioneer in lifestyle management. Check it out if you want to break away from your daily routine of going into an office.

Get travel information at Sundance Vacation.

We’re launching this career and jobs blog at a time when our nation is experiencing very difficult economic times. We may have averted a depression, but unemployment just hit a 26-year high of 9.7%. The economy appears to be turning, but job growth seems to be far off.

Hopefully, we can help some of you who are looking for work as we discuss career and job issues and tips. We’ll also provide information for people who want to plan their careers or possibly change careers, and for those of you who want to start a business or do a better job of managing your business or department.

This site will be about maximizing the enjoyment and rewards you get out of the career you choose, or the career or job you deem necessary under your current circumstances.

We always welcome feedback, so please let us know your thoughts.

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