Even in this runaway economy that has some factories running 24 hours, ... employers are still able to find areas that can be trimmed or eliminated altogether.

Companies need to find out where their business is going to be in the next decade, ... and the way you do that is by listening to your employees, watching the market, and then growing in those areas with your people.

as companies expand in one area, they often cut in the areas that do not show as much promise.

This may not mean that telecom is the weakest of the technology industries, but it is clearly the most volatile. While some areas in this industry are consolidating, others are expanding.

Those are two areas of the economy that should be perking up right now if we were in a recovery mode, ... Normally, businesses hire temp workers and work their employees longer -- this drop is of real concern and raises the specter of a double-dip recession.

Taking full time off to go back to graduate school once you're, say, past 28, is very costly. Yes, there's no question it enhances your value -- particularly in the big stream areas like finance, sales and marketing, engineering, health care. But you don't want to use graduate school as a deferral because you don't want to face the job market.