New data from payroll companies suggests that small businesses are slowly beginning to add employees, even as the most recent Labor Department report shows the unemployment rate held steady at just under 10 percent. Some economists believe these numbers indicate the recession is bottoming out.

Based on data gathered from Intuit’s online payroll service, companies with less than 20 employees have added jobs since June 2009, said Business Week Additionally, data from SurePayroll shows the average paycheck for workers at businesses with fewer than 100 employees has stabilized, said Business Week.

President Obama has put forth a number of measures intended to get people back to work, including tax incentives for businesses that hire new employees and pushing banks to free up more credit for small businesses.

John Bishop, a labor economist at Cornell University, told Business Week that temporary incentives like tax credits could create more than 2 million jobs in a year.
“It potentially has a huge effect, and small business would be the primary beneficiary of that,” Bishop told Business Week.

A drop in the November unemployment rate provided a glimmer of hope that the unrelentingly bleak job market may be headed for a turnaround.

The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent last month, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The average work week and earnings also rose in November, the Labor Department reported.

The economy shed 11,000 jobs last month, an improvement from October’s revised total of 111,000 lost jobs, and significantly better than the 130,000 Wall Street economists had expected in November, said the Associated Press.

Economists say that substantial job growth is needed to make a dent in the unemployment rate. According to the Labor Department, 15.4 million unemployed people are seeking work, and 11.5 million others are working part-time but want full-time jobs or have given up job hunting altogether.

In a troubling sign for small businesses, a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business showed more small companies plan to reduce employment in the next three months than plan to add jobs, said the AP.

The U.S. unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October — a 26-year high, according to recent figures from the Labor Department.

The country shed 190,000 jobs in September, even as other economic indicators have pointed to a recovery from the recession. President Barack Obama on Friday signed a bill that would extend unemployment benefits up to an additional 20 weeks and extend the first-time homebuyer tax credit.

Republican critics of the Obama administration are pointing to the double-digit unemployment rate as proof that the $787 billion stimulus package is failing; meanwhile, labor unions and some Democrats are calling for more spending to create jobs, according to the New York Times.

The highest level of unemployment came at the end of 1982, when it hit 10.8 percent, reported the Times.

The housing market and manufacturing output are showing signs of stabilization or improvement in many parts of the country, but consumer spending and hiring isn’t budging, according to reports by the Labor Department and Federal Reserve released Wednesday.

“You are in that period where the recession is over but you don’t have job growth. And until we get job growth, nobody is going to believe the recession is over,” John Canally, an economist for LPL Financial in Boston, said in a Wall Street Journal article.

The unemployment rate tops 10 percent in 14 states, according to the Labor Department.

While the business climate is getting better, the report also noted that the commercial real estate market is still weak. Regional banks haven’t freed up business lending, so many empty storefronts remain vacant.

Cities with federal projects funded by the federal stimulus bill, such as Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis and Dallas, are the only areas reporting an increase in commercial real estate activity, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The number of women making more money than their spouses is on the rise, and the recession has contributed to the shift in earning power, according to recent statistics from the Labor Department.

In 2007, nearly 26 percent of wives earned more than their husbands when both worked. Among all married couples, including those where the husband isn’t working, 33.5 percent of women earned more than men, said MSNBC.com.

Significantly more men than women have lost their job during the recession. Of the 7 million unemployed people in the country, nearly three-quarters are male.

While more wives are becoming the primary breadwinner in their households, women on average earn 77 cents to every dollar a man makes, according to a study by the Families and Work Institute.

Another study found that the majority of both men and women said they are “very comfortable” with a wife earning more than a husband, but many couples say the situation can present some problems. Some women feel guilty about spending less time with their children; and men, whose self-esteem is often tied to their jobs, can feel confused and depressed by the new family dynamic.

But for most families, staying afloat financially trumps other issues.

“I’m very glad I didn’t listen to all those teachers in the ’70s (who said), ‘Oh, don’t worry, your husband will take care of you. Oh, don’t worry about getting an education,’” computer programmer Beth Klingensmith, 45, told MSNBC.com.

The first week of March provided little to be happy about for investors with terrible job news and a still-volatile Wall Street hitting a low not seen since 1997.

“Stocks rose, fell, then clawed their way back to a mixed close after the Labor Department released its February jobs report,” MSNBC.com said in a March 6 story. “But while the market finished well above its lows — the Dow Jones industrials had a modest gain after falling more than 120 points — many market watchers say there’s no reason stocks can’t slide further, even as the major indexes are near 12-year lows.”

Contributing to that downward pressure is that big institutional investors are still sitting on the sidelines, MSNBC.com said, leaving the market to the far more volatile actions of short sellers, who buy stock on borrowed cash and bet for the price to go down.

“The shorts are having a complete field day in this environment,” Kent Engelke, managing director at Capital Securities Management in Glen Allen, Va., told the Web site. “Right now you have everybody so fearful, and these shorts are controlling the market.”

The worst news of the week came with February jobs numbers — worse than analysts expected, but not as bad as some investors had feared, MSNBC.com said.

“Employers cut 651,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.1 percent, MSNBC.com said. The government also revised its December and January job loss figures up to 681,000 and 655,000, respectively.”

The Dow was down 6.2 percent for the week, marking its lowest point since the spring of 1997.

There have been gains in the market, but the overall slide has been too far and too fast for a small rally to make a difference.

“When you get this precipitous of a fall, you are always due for some sort of rally, but a rally will be unsustainable,” Jeff Buetow, senior portfolio manager at Portfolio Management Consultants told MSNBC.com.