The news on jobs keeps improving.

Weekly jobless claims moved sharply lower, while inflation remained tame and housing starts unexpectedly weakened in December, according to a set of data painting a mixed picture of the economic recovery.

Weekly unemployment benefit applications dropped to 352,000, the fewest in nearly four years.

The buzz out there is that manufacturing is a big part of the rebound.

It will be interesting to see how the improving job situation will affect the 2012 presidential election.

This just might mean something for millions of unemployed manufacturing workers across America.

Dana Morey, executive vice-president of Morey Corp., remember well Chinese New Year two years ago, when they were calling all over Shenzhen, China, trying unsuccessfully to find someone who could pick up a load of finished parts from a factory during the two-week holiday and ship them to Chicago. Then it was holes not drilled deeply enough in a shipment of circuit boards from a Chinese supplier. Similar problems have occurred in metal and plastic castings.

Morey is part of the wave of “near-shoring” or “re-shoring” of production that gained momentum during the recession. Manufacturers are bringing work back to the U.S. because of the rising cost of shipping, labor and raw materials—coupled with quality problems and shortened lead times from customers unable to predict their own orders in a still-choppy economy.

“People are starting to see they went too far in outsourcing,” says Harry Moser, former chairman of Lincolnshire-based machine-tool maker AgieCharmilles LLC and a proponent of bringing manufacturing work back to the U.S.

The near-shoring trend is hard to quantify, however. A January study by Chicago-based accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP found that 20% of the 312 companies it surveyed had shifted from Asian suppliers last year to partners closer to home, mostly in the U.S. And 12% planned to do so this year.

While it’s not enough to reverse the 40-year shift in manufacturing from the U.S. to Asia, Mexico and Latin America, winning back some work that had gone overseas is helping manufacturers recover from the deep downturn that started three years ago.

Let’s see how many manufacturing companies follow suit in the coming year. So far, Caterpillar, Ford Motor, General Electric, and NCR have already moved operations and thousands of jobs back to the U.S.

We’ve been hearing anecdotal evidence that hiring has been picking up, and today’s job numbers confirm the trend with some good news on the jobs front.

Employment in the U.S. increased in March by the most in three years and the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent as companies gained confidence the economic recovery will be sustained.

Payrolls rose by 162,000 last month, less than anticipated, figures from the Labor Department in Washington showed today. The March increase included 48,000 temporary workers hired by the government to conduct the 2010 census, as well as job gains in manufacturing and health services.

The government revised January and February payroll figures up by a combined 62,000, putting the March gain at 224,000 after including the updated data. Caterpillar Inc. is among companies adding staff, indicating the recovery that began in the second half of 2009 is starting to foster the jobs needed to lift consumer spending and sustain the expansion.

Let’s see if this can be sustained. Much of the stimulus money is still in the pipeline, so we can expect more hiring resulting from those federal dollars and they work their way through the economy. Also, manufacturing seems to be picking up, so that could also have a very positive effect.