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American companies are reluctant to hire, and the proof is in the Bureau of Labor Statistics new report, released early Friday morning. Here are some glimpses from the economic report, broken down into digestible nuggets:

Recession is real. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, says there is “no debate that the economy is in a recession.” Among other worries for the average American, beyond a lower net worth and smaller purchasing power, Zandi says it is tough to find a job, and “if you lose a job, it is tough to get back in.”

Jobless jump. The new BLS report shows that May’s jobless rate jumped to 5.5% from 5%, a sounding bell that U.S. growth is stalling.

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This is a new take on old-fashioned summer jobs.

Hundreds of teens from across the five boroughs in New York City, who are part of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, are looking to “make a job, not take a job.”

These students certainly have the entrepreneurial spirit.

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If you need parallels between our softening economic conditions and the job market as a whole, consider this depressing fact: after hitting all-time highs in 2007, hourly wages for highly skilled technology professionals dropped year-over-year during the first quarter of 2008.

Yep, tech professionals. There is no denying the market’s sluggishness after you skim the Yoh Index of Technology Wages. Tech professionals’ salaries are falling, with wages dropping 2.7% in the first-quarter, when compared to the same period in 2007.

Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh, points out that “this drop in wages this quarter, coupled with April’s negative Bureau of Labor Statistics report on employment, paints a very lackluster picture of the economy.”

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Got stress?

Just before we head out for the long Memorial Day weekend, let’s review how stress can be the silent killer of retention in your recruiting department.

Think “silent killer” is being a bit dramatic?

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You can only hope that the best A-level candidates in Sarasota, Florida, are two-pack-a-day smokers and get turned down for employment with the county and ultimately end up working at your company.

While everyone can agree that smoking is unhealthy, should it be the primary reason to close the door on prospective new applicants? Especially prospective “star” candidates?

Well, Sarasota county government seems to think so. On Monday, it implemented a tobacco-free hiring policy for all new job applicants.

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Nursing shortage? Yes, we’ve all heard of it, and most people would agree that a properly staffed hospital is a basic human necessity, not a luxury.

And if you’ve been hospitalized recently, or even had to wait in a doctor’s room lately, you’re probably aware that even the best nurses are over-worked and under-paid.

So no matter what side of the immigration debate you’re on, is there really a legitimate argument left over why we’re blocking the efforts of highly motivated nursing students to stay in our country and aid the sick, tired, and needy?

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The title “working dad” might seem silly, borderline redundant. Yet, no one pauses when they hear the phrase “working mom,” a title that now applies to me and one I wear with pride as I cruise into my first Mother’s Day this weekend.

As a new working mom, I realize that not everyone is lucky enough to work for a company as progressive as ERE Media. Not everyone gets a fair maternity leave, and not everyone gets to work with a team of really amazing people who value family life and relationships.

In fact, a new CareerBuilder.com survey finds that 43% of working moms would choose a pay cut in order to spend more time with their kids. Something tells me that 43% is a rather low figure, assuming the other 57% haven’t spawned a “problem child” who clings to them like a rhesus monkey that practices his high-pitched shrieks at 3 am.

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In trying to summarize my experience at the Web 2.0 conference, I find myself thinking about how quickly technology changes the way we work, play, and in general live our lives. I’m 29 years old, and I can remember my first Atari, first Commodore 64 computer (later upgraded to a 128), my first PC, the first time I logged onto AOL (and racked up a couple of $400 bills when they still charged by the minute!), and my first cell phone (a big clunky plastic analog thing). I remember the first time I discovered chat through BBS systems, the first time I went on a date with someone I’d met online (this was way before it became socially acceptable to do so!), and the first time I sent a text message.

In reflecting back on all this stuff, I started trying to recall what I did before I had these technologies available to me. I’m sure this is a question that many of you have asked yourselves as well, especially those of you in the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation, who can remember back way further than I ever could.

Seriously, how did we survive? What did we do for entertainment? Has technology really dumbed us down so much that we literally cannot find each other in a crowd without calling or texting our locations? Are we losing the ability to communicate face to face with each other because technology has allowed us the luxury of communicating through non-verbal and impersonal means?

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An interesting item appeared about online degrees coming in vogue and what this means for recruiters. In short, although it seems they still prefer people with traditional four-year sheepskins, more hiring managers are warming to candidates who earned their credentials via accredited distance-learning programs. (Read: not diploma mills).

For one thing, prejudices appear to be evaporating against people going the online route, driven no doubt by companies’ voracious appetite for talent (coupled with the “where are all the good candidates?” syndrome). The line is beginning to blur between online and classroom training, with a growing number of bricks-and-mortar campuses delivering course offerings online. That’s a trend that’s been developing for a number of years.

Although slightly dated, research from The Sloan Foundation reinforces why all this is crucial to recruiters. Sloan says 20 percent of all U.S. higher education students took at least one online course in 2006. And at nearly 10 percent, the rate of growth of online enrollments far outstrips the 1.5 percent of the overall national population of higher-ed students.

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Less risk? Less fraud? Less litigation? Happier employees?

Think that’s an impossible order? Allegiance, a Salt Lake City-based company, says it doesn’t have to be, though most companies “don’t know where to begin” and are sadly behind the curve on adopting an ethical culture of their own.

Its chief operating officer, Greg Heaps, suggests that “today’s employees want to work for an organization that has built a foundation on integrity and that cares about operating an honest company, hiring other principled people, and working with ethical partners.”

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Only 23% of hiring managers plan to hire seasonal workers for the summer this year, but of that figure, 66% expect these summer hires to stick around for eventual permanent placement.

What makes these companies so cocky? While other companies are struggling to find enough talent, this group of employers thinks money is enough to keep their new hires happy.

In fact, 24% of employers plan to pay their summer hires and/or interns more this year than they did last year. But as we all know, money is no guarantee that these seasonal workers will stick.

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As popular ERE columnist John Sullivan has warned, the way to an executive’s heart is not through a tedious online application process.

As Sullivan points out, sending the best talent you can find to your corporate website to make them fill out the same painful application anyone else coming to the site would fill out is beyond ineffective.

And a new study shows that Sullivan’s philosophy is right on the money.

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If you knew that nearly half the job seekers who have Internet access are not using online media to look for a job, would that make you spend more or less in the next few years?

When January 1 rolled around, and the first baby boomers became eligible to collect Social Security, it seems that an alarm bell went off to figure out, once and for all, the employment sector over the next five years.

That must be why, according to a study by Research and Markets, entitled Snapshots U.S. Advertising 2008, recruiters will spend $58 billion this year on recruitment advertising across all media, local and national.

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Manpower is out with its list of the 10 hardest jobs to fill in the United States, and for the third consecutive year, sales representatives, technicians, accountants/finance staff, and machinists remain in demand, proving that job seekers with specific skill sets are still in demand.

This list shows the ranking for 2008, with the 2007 rankings in parentheses:

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What’s that sound you just heard? It’s the sound of the bubble bursting over the heads of many soon-to-be graduates of the Class of 2008. By all accounts, it seems they are entering a market that is quickly getting more competitive as employers slow their hiring pace amid economic uncertainty.

In fact, a new CareerBuilder survey shows that 58% of employers plan to hire recent college graduates in 2008, down from 79% in 2007. That 58% figure is remarkably similar to MonsterTrak data released last month, showing that only 59% of employers plan to hire this spring, a decrease of 17%.

These figures contradict new data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which recently suggested that hiring new recruits is expected to be 8% higher than last spring.

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A whopping 74% of job seekers vying for six-figure jobs are reportedly noticing a serious slowdown in interview opportunities.

Despite recession worries, however, 53% still view high-end jobs in their cities as either “stable” or “somewhat stable,” according to a new survey.

And even if economists are throwing around the “r” word with disdain, these job-seeking executives are saying otherwise. The survey shows that 65% still remain confident that they will be gainfully employed at a high-paying job within six months.

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I’m an on-the-cusp Gen-Y worker listening to a stereotypical Gen X-er talk about what Gen Y wants in their careers.Really, I think. What can she teach recruiters about how to manage me and my generation in the workplace?

It’s not that I don’t respect the rat-a-tat, rapid-fire delivery by workplace writer Penelope Trunk, speaking at the ERE Expo in San Diego. Her witty observations appear in her syndicated Boston Globe column and on her popular blog. It’s not her delivery that annoys me; what is bugging me is that for as many times as she completely misses the mark about what Gen Y wants, she also sometimes nails it.

But the painfully obvious takeaway is that her observations about Gen Y are predicated on a classic case of sibling rivalry. Gen X is the typical oldest child who has fought their “parents,” or those Boomer bosses, all their careers.

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As recruiters dive into the more than seven-million business cards available on Jigsaw.com, it’s obvious that Jigsaw can be valuable, but is it ethical? Who’s responsible for protecting people’s privacy — Jigsaw, or the recruiter who uses Jigsaw?

A hostile, rousing debate about ethics transpired during the ERE Expo San Diego, and the audience got a first-hand account of user-generated content as Jim Fowler, Jigsaw’s founder and CEO, and Susan Pierce, executive director of the non-profit organization PrivacyActivism, broke apart the privacy puzzle.

Dennis Smith, a recruiting leader known for his wirelessjobs.com blog, served as referee, er, moderator, between the two polar opposite views on the privacy puzzle.

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Some soundbites from the keynote by Gene Stanaland, former head of the Auburn University economics department:

-The U.S. economy has been resilient through a tumultous period of several major events packed into a few years: a recession, terrorist attacks, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, stock market and accounting scandals, controversial elections that ended up in the Supreme Court, a hurricane, and more.

-Chances are good Democrats will take the White House.

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A new acquisition, the slowing economy, increased competitive pressures, or plummeting sock prices. There’s a good chance your business felt the impact from one of these major events in the past year. But did your company have a workforce plan in place that anticipated the event’s impact on human capital?

The most likely answer to that question is no, because nearly 90 percent of the attendees at the “Workforce Planning” workshop at today’s ERE Expo in San Diego said their companies only had basic workforce planning models in place, and those traditional models don’t forecast human capital needs based upon possible future business scenarios.

“Too often the first step in the workforce planning process happens when the requisition is received, and that’s too late,” said Ed Newman, president of the Newman Group, who facilitated the workshop. Newman says that intermediate-level workforce planning combines workforce analytics with scenario modeling to look at how future business circumstances may impact retention and future hiring needs.

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