Job Market

W hile on active duty in Iraq, Matthew Ellersick started job hunting online, planning his transition to civilian life. Since returning from a six-month deployment in February, the Army National Guard intelligence analyst, who has a master's degree in marketing, has traveled a circuit of job fairs from Tampa, Fla., to Philadelphia with no luck. "When I came back, the economy was a lot worse than when I left," said Ellersick during a recent job fair in Baltimore, a chance to come face-to-face with employers after many companies he contacted had directed him to apply online.

The U.S. economy added 162,000 new payroll jobs in March, the Labor Department said Friday, marking the first sign of substantial job growth since the recession and the largest one-month increase in three years. The job gains, however, weren't strong enough to bring down the unemployment rate, which remained at 9.7 percent in March for the third month in a row. And economists were cautious, saying they expect the labor market recovery to be slow. Part of the job increase in March, 48,000 positions, came from the hiring of temporary workers by the Census Bureau.

Many states added jobs in January, but Maryland - a latecomer to the dour recession party that has undergone a shorter period of job loss - wasn't among them. Maryland employers cut 2,500 jobs in January, the 18th straight month of losses in this two-year-old recession, the Labor Department estimated Wednesday. The state's unemployment rate rose from 7.4 percent in December to 7.5 percent in January, a new high-water mark not seen since the spring of 1983. Nationally, the employment picture was mixed.

The number of employed Maryland residents has fallen so sharply that it's hit a low not seen in nearly a decade. Last month, 2.7 million adults in the state had jobs - about 135,000 fewer than the year before, according to newly released U.S. Labor Department estimates. Not since November 2001 have so few Marylanders been employed, and the decline happened even as the overall population grew. The economic downshifting has been rapid, overtaxing the state's unemployment benefits fund and making job seekers re-evaluate whether it's even worth looking.

The number of employed Maryland residents has fallen so sharply that it's hit a low not seen in nearly a decade. Last month, 2.7 million adults in the state had jobs - about 135,000 fewer than the year before, according to newly released U.S. Labor Department estimates. Not since November 2001 have so few Marylanders been employed, and the decline happened even as the overall population grew. The economic downshifting has been rapid, overtaxing the state's unemployment benefits fund and making job seekers re-evaluate whether it's even worth looking.

T alk about identity confusion. Gay marriage hasn't even been legalized in Maryland, but already it has state Del. Emmett Burns struggling to sort something out: When it comes to homosexual couples, Burns wants to know, who wears the pants in the family? Rob Gutro , a gay Marylander who married his longtime partner in Connecticut last June, called Burns the other day after reading about a bill the delegate has sponsored that would prohibit Maryland from recognizing gay marriages performed elsewhere.

Two years after the country spiraled into a severe recession, Marylanders' job prospects are still getting worse. The state's unemployment rate rose to 7.4 percent last month from 7.3 percent in October, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Friday. That adds up to nearly 220,000 residents actively looking for work, twice as many as there were at the end of 2007. The situation seemed to be stabilizing in the summer, when the unemployment rate stopped rising, but the pause was only temporary.

Two years after the country spiraled into a severe recession, Marylanders' job prospects are still getting worse. The state's unemployment rate rose to 7.4 percent last month from 7.3 percent in October, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Friday. That adds up to nearly 220,000 residents actively looking for work, twice as many as there were at the end of 2007. The situation seemed to be stabilizing in the summer, when the unemployment rate stopped rising, but the pause was only temporary.

Maryland's unemployment rate returned to 7.2 percent last month after dipping to 7.1 percent in August, the federal government said Wednesday. The state's unemployment rate was also 7.2 percent in May, June and July, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's revised estimates. It's a plateau of sorts after a rapid worsening in the job market that began a year ago, pushing Maryland's rate from a relatively low 4.6 percent the previous September to the current 26-year high. But job losses have continued.

Matt Bivons knew he had to do something extraordinary to stand out as a job candidate in a tough job market. So he built a Web site. But it wasn't just any ol' resume site under his own name. Instead, in early June, he launched BSFShouldHire.me, an interactive online campaign targeted at Baltimore-based e-mail marketing firm Blue Sky Factory that showed off more than just his resume and connected visitors to him via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. His efforts earned him a second interview at Blue Sky recently, among a field of more than a dozen applicants.