By Maya Rhodan, TIME

Americans today are as hopeful about finding a good job as they were before the recession, according to a new survey.

In December, 36% of Americans said they felt now is the right time to find a good quality job--up from 30% last month, a new Gallup poll reports. The last time Americans' job outlook stood at this level was back in November 2007, when 38% of Americans were confident they could find a good job.

Americans' job quality outlook has generally remained low throughout the recession, dipping to as low as 8% several times since 2009. The marked change in respondents' outlook in the recent poll seems to indicate an overall increase in confidence in the U.S. job market, which has improved over the past year.

So far in 2014, the U.S. added over 2 million jobs, the most since the 1990s. In October and November, U.S. employment remained under 6%.

The Gallup poll results are based on a survey of 805 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The jump in job openings is a hopeful sign for both the U.S. economy and the job market.

Employers not in the farming sector had 4.83 million positions waiting to be filled during October, up from 4.69 million in September, according to the Labor Department.

Job openings across the U.S. economy have jumped since April, according to Reuters, and the number of open slots in October was just shy of the 4.85 million jobs available in August, which was the highest reading since 2001.

The report follows the November employment figures, released last Friday, which showed a jump in job creation last month.

--Reuters contributed to this report.

Yes, the unemployment rate has dropped significantly in recent months, but millions of Americans remain unemployed or have left the labor market altogether, and a startling number of Americans--1.1 million--have been without work for 27 weeks or more. Given these statistics, it does seem strange that employers consistently claim they can’t find good people these days.

Economists like Peter Capelli of Wharton argue that there isn’t so much a lack of skilled workers in the U.S. but that American companies have grown complacent after years of being able to easily outsource or convince American workers to do more for less, and that they are simply engaged in “an effort to secure policy changes that lower labor costs.” Employers are reluctant, Capelli argues, to simply offer wages that would attract necessary workers, or invest in training needed to get capable workers ready for the specific tasks employers need performed.

While there is some truth to Capelli’s argument, the fact remains that broader measures of unemployment remain abnormally high at the same time that job openings are at a 13-year high. Many of these openings are for good paying jobs that would enable low-income Americans or the unemployed to significantly raise their standards of living. This situation is benefitting neither the workers nor American companies, and perhaps what is called for is some novel thinking to solve a serious problem, rather than simply casting blame on lazy workers or miserly bosses.

That’s the approach Joe Fuller of Harvard Business School takes in a new report out Wednesday, released as part of HBS’ Competitiveness Project, in which he and his partners at Accenture and Burning Glass technologies surveyed both American employers and millions of resumes collected from recruiting agencies, job boards, and other intermediaries to study the modern American labor market. What he found was a classic “market failure” in which suppliers of jobs are unable to find the right people to fill those positions and the unemployed and underemployed are unable to climb into the middle class.

At the heart of this failure is the market for middle skill jobs, traditionally defined as jobs that require more education than a high school diploma but less than a four- year degree. These jobs include everything from administrative work to skilled manufacturing and healthcare services, and they often pay quite well. An entry level computer support specialist, for instance, earns an average salary of $44,000 per year, according to Burning Glass. And these jobs offer the ability to advance to managerial positions in the same field, which can earn workers nearly double that salary--well above the median American pay.

Unfortunately, these are the very same jobs that employers are wary of filling. According to Fuller, “employers appear reluctant to hire full-time workers if an alternative presents itself.” A related Competitiveness Project survey of HBS alumni showed that:

…46% of respondents agreed that their firms' U.S. operations prefer to invest in technology to perform work rather than hire or retain employees, while only 25% disagreed. Second, 49% said that their firms preferred to rely on vendors to perform work that can be outsourced, while only 29% reported that their firms would rather hire additional workers and keep work in-house. Third, when choosing to hire, companies also indicated a distinct preference for relying on part-timers. Companies that increased their reliance on part-time workers over the past three years outnumbered those that had reduced their proportion of part-timers by two to one.

The average American worker doesn’t need a survey to tell him that companies are behaving this way. But Fuller argues that this tendency to rely on technology and part-time workers is a defensive reaction to a rapidly changing global marketplace, rather than a long-term strategy that will enable U.S. companies to compete on a global scale. Writes Fuller:

Many employers use a reactive approach to filling middle-skills needs. Too few engage in workforce planning; too many assume that workers will be available as needed. That leaves them exposed to the vagaries of the business cycle, when all competitors are presumably adding capacity. More importantly, by failing to anticipate which workforce capabilities are critical to their strategic health, companies risk requiring workers with skills in emerging areas for which there is limited or no supply. Employers need more rigorous middle-skills workforce planning in projecting their requirements and should share those needs with their staff as well as their existing sources of talent.

Employers, Fuller argues, need to approach the market for middle-skills talent like they would any other supply chain. They should start to develop an understanding of the true costs of relying on short-term fixes to employment needs and then develop long-term relationships with suppliers of middle-skills talent, like community colleges, or develop their own apprenticeship programs. He also recommends that policy makers and educators fulfill their side of the bargain by teaching the skills employers say they need from their workers. Fuller argues that community colleges and technical schools must do a better job teaching soft skills like work ethics, communication, teamwork, and leadership--skills that HR leaders specifically consider lacking among today’s job applicants.

The report offers the example of Grainger, an industrial supplies distributor, which has invested more than $2 million since 2006 in technical education programs and scholarships. Grainer has also teamed up with more than 100 community and technical colleges to teach students skills the firm needs from employees. Fuller also points to the State of Ohio’s OhioMeansJobs program, which offers an online database that helps the unemployed understand what skills are in demand and will lead to a path for career advancement, and help them plan to retrain for such jobs.

Perhaps the best piece of advice offered by the Harvard study is simply to treat the skills problem as a solvable challenge. The American economy underwent a revolution over the past generation, as the global economy has integrated new technologies and billions of upwardly mobile workers. Now, everyone--from employers, to educators, to workers themselves--needs to think about the employment market differently.

Don’t expect to see Fed Chair Janet Yellen at the podium; she isn’t scheduled to give a post-meeting conference today. And don’t hold your breath for any new economic projections, but do be on the lookout for what the group will say on issues of concern, and any indication of future interest rate rises. Here’s what to pay attention to when the Fed releases its statement today.

1. The end of quantitative easing.

Central bankers are expected to say they are winding down the Fed’s two-year stimulus initiative known as QE3, the bank’s third round of quantitative easing. The $4 trillion bond-buying program is the method by which the Fed bought up Treasury and mortgage bonds to prop up the economy, and to provide cash to banks that could then lend out that money. The bond-buying started in late 2008. The big question following the meeting is: what will happen once the stimulus stops? There are concerns out there as to whether the U.S. economy is strong enough to keep growing without it.

2. Any word on the future of interest rate hikes.

Even as QE comes to a close, the Fed is expected to stay mum on the future of interest rate hikes. Officials have emphasized that they’re aren’t in a rush to push policy tightening further by raising interest rates given the current state of the economy.

“The Fed will remain keen to defuse any large scale market turmoil in the immediate term,” Nick Gartside, chief investment officer, fixed income, at JP Morgan Asset Management in London, told Reuters. “And will continue to focus on language that helps to stabilize the markets.”

3. Stubbornly low inflation is still worrisome.

Inflation has remained stubbornly below the Fed’s 2% target for 28 consecutive months, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s consumer price index. The lack of any price gains is one major reason the central bank would hold back on raising interest rates too soon, according to recent speeches by regional Fed Presidents William C. Dudley of New York, Charles Evans of Chicago and Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis.

The Fed has said that the risk of inflation coming in consistently below its 2% target has “diminished somewhat since early this year,” following its September meeting. The majority of economists believe the committee will stick closely to this language, according to a Bloomberg survey.

4. People still aren’t being put back to full-time work.

In September, the Fed said it was worried about the “significant underutilization of labor resources.” While the U.S. unemployment rate fell to its lowest level that month (5.9%) many workers are still underemployed. The unemployment rate that includes the jobless plus those employed part-time but would like more and people who have given up looking for work remains elevated at 11.8%.

Nearly 64% of economists in the Bloomberg survey expect the Fed to hold to its “significant” language.

5. What is the status of global growth?

The eurozone and China face slowing economic growth, which poses a potential threat to U.S. expansion, according to the Fed’s September statement. That comment sent the U.S. markets spinning and resulted in the most volatile week since the financial crisis.

The committee will be very careful in how -- and if -- it addresses global growth in its policy statement this month. If the issue isn’t addressed Wednesday, it will more likely show up in the group’s minutes due out Nov. 19.

The U.S. economy added 248,000 jobs last month, re-starting the 200,000-plus job addition streak that was broken in August. The gains reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are higher than the 210,000 jobs that economists had anticipated, according to Bloomberg data.

The nation’s unemployment rate slipped to 5.9% from 6.1% in August, falling below the 6% level for the first time since July 2008.

Payrolls numbers for July and August were revised higher.

February through July of this year all saw strong monthly job gains, and August took most economists and analysts by surprise. However, the low number was revised higher to 180,000 Friday from the initial report of 142,000 jobs. The initial August employment report was the weakest month since December of last year.

While the job gains have started to pick-up again, the recovery remains uneven. Weak wage growth has plagued the economy due to the mix of jobs created, which have been heavily skewed towards part-time work and lower-paying retail jobs.

There were nearly 7.1 million involuntary part-time workers in September, which is largely unchanged month over month. Those are workers who are part-time employed for economic reasons and would prefer full-time work.

“The overall trends in the job market have been what we call improving,” said Mark Hamrick, the Washington bureau chief for Bankrate.com. “But there are also some structural issues that are harder to get our arms around. Perhaps employers in more instances than we know are favoring part time workers.”

Part-time workers have been part of the reason for slow-growing wages, which Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen has been worried about recently. The high number of part-time workers, especially given the broad number that would prefer full-time work, represents a “significant underutilization of labor resources,” which is dampening wage growth, she said.

As the job market continues to improve, there is an opportunity for more of these part-time employees to move into full-time work, said Hamrick.

“If we do see further declines in the employment rate,” he said. “Eventually these employers are going to have to resolve their resource needs in the sense of getting a qualified worker in the position.”

This could bode well for the end of the year as holiday hiring picks up and the economy continues to gain back steam during a plodding recovery.

Hiring this year has been generally broad. The economy finally regained all the 8.7 million jobs lost during the financial crisis in May of this year, capping off a recovery that took more than four years.

Monthly job cuts fell to their lowest level in 14 years in September, and 2014 is on track to be the lowest job-cut year since 1997. A total of about 30,500 job cuts were announced last month, 24% less than in August, according to a new report by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

Weekly unemployment claims also dropped to a new pre-recession low, according to the Labor Department release Thursday. Seasonally-adjusted initial claims were 287,000 for the week through Sept. 27, down almost 10% year-over-year and falling below economists predictions.

That’s all good news, since the economy only gained back the total number of jobs lost in the recession in May. There’s still progress to be made in order to keep up with demand for job creation -- not just replace the positions initially lost -- as new graduates and others enter the job market for the first time.

Job gains have been on a tear, as well. Nearly 213,000 private-sector jobs were added last month, according to the most recent numbers released by ADP Wednesday. That’s the sixth straight month of private-sector job gains over 200,000.

“Job security is being helped by the fact that corporate profits remain near record highs,” John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement. “So, we may see some ebb and flow in the rate of hiring, but employers, at this point, are reluctant to make any over-correction in workforce levels."

The low number of job cuts is expected to continue through the fourth quarter. The last quarter typically has the fewest job cuts compared to other times of year, which has been the case, on average, over the past five years.

That’s a conclusion you can easily draw from a trove of Census data released this week, which showed that while 18 to 34 year olds are less likely to live with their parents than they were at the height of the recession, their economic prospects are lagging behind those of the broader population.

Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia, put together this graph, which shows that Millennials are finally moving out of their parents’ houses, after years of living at home:

But that’s where the good news ends. Over the past two years, Millennials have been moving away from home, but they don’t actually have enough money, or desire, to form their own households. The homeownership rate among Millennials continues to fall:

The falling homeownership rate and falling “headship rate”--which is the share of Millennials who are the head of a household regardless of whether they own real estate--suggest that this generation is still doubling up with friends or other relatives even if they aren’t living with Mom and Dad.

This isn’t good for the future of the construction and real estate industries. Millennials are a massive demographic group, slightly larger than even the Baby Boomers. If this group builds the wherewithal to strike out on their own and buy homes, that could be a great boon for the economy. But at this point, Millennials are not there.

The unemployment rate for those ages 16 to 24 is more than twice that of the population at large. For those aged 25 to 34, the picture looks a bit better, with the unemployment rate just 10% higher than the overall population. The one bright spot in the Census data for the youngest workers: between 2012 and 2013, median income for those aged 15 to 24 shot up by 10% from $31,000 per year to roughly $34,000 per year. But this is the first time since 2006 that this age group has seen any increase in income at all, meanwhile the cost of shelter has risen 16% since that time. Income for the older half of the Millennial generation rose just 1.1% between 2012 and 2013.

This poor performance could mean that the housing industry is building too many homes, according to Kolka. This is quite the surprise given that single-family housing construction is still well below pre-crisis and even pre-bubble norms:

US Housing Starts: 1 Unit data by YCharts

Writes Kolko, “Newly released data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) show that the vacancy rate for single-family homes actually ticked up a bit in 2013. That's a big surprise. It suggests even today's low level of single-family construction might still be too much, too soon.”

In other words, unless young people start to earn more and begin to form their own households, it’s difficult to see how the housing recovery will gain steam and support a construction industry that in years past has boosted annual GDP growth by as much as 1.5%.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index rose to a reading of 92.4 in August, up from 90.3 in July and the strongest reading since October 2007. That’s good news, of course, as consumers drive the lion’s share of economic activity. But lurking behind those cheery numbers is a less-welcome truth: The job market is still mediocre.

While overall consumer confidence increased in August, the number of consumers anticipating higher incomes fell to 15.5% in August versus 17.7% in the month prior. More people also expected their wages to fall, too, with 11.9% of respondents expecting their pay to drop, versus 11.1% in July, according to the Conference Board.

“Looking ahead, consumers were marginally less optimistic about the short-term outlook compared to July, primarily due to concerns about their earnings,” said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board.

Consumers’ doubts back-up Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen’s ongoing concern: That there’s little wage growth happening and it’s continuing to hinder a full economic recovery.

Wages have barely kept pace with inflation over the past five years. Real wages have grown a tepid 0.5% since 2009, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That’s the weakest growth since World War II. After past recessions, wage increases have averaged 9.2% during similar periods of recovery.

“The recent behavior of both nominal and real wages point to weaker labor market conditions than would be indicated by the current unemployment rate,” Yellen said in a speech to central bankers last week.

Even though the job market has been gaining steam -- the unemployment rate has dropped to 6.2% and job gains this year have averaged a decent 230,000 each month -- the recovery isn’t necessarily as robust as it appears.

Yellen is looking to improve wage gains as the new standard for the U.S. economic recovery. Until wages start to pick up, the Fed is unlikely to declare the economy healed and ready for higher interest rates.

The effect of stagnating incomes continues to spill over into the larger economy, weighing on the housing recovery and consumer spending.

Existing-home sales are predicted to be down 3% this year to 4.9 million from 5.1 million in 2013, according to the National Association of Realtors. Meanwhile, retail sales sputtered last month with their weakest reading since January.

Builders and retailers may not see much sunshine on the horizon, either. Until take-home pay picks up, higher consumer confidence is unlikely to translate into more dollars at the cash register.

In an economy where consumer spending drives about 70% of economic activity, suppressed wages will continue to drag on America’s post-crisis recovery.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual meeting in Wyoming’s Jackson Hole kicked off Friday with a talk from Yellen about the job market and the status of the U.S. economy.

Her speech offered very little about the direction of monetary policy, as some had hoped. Many investors expect the Fed to begin raising interest rates next year, though Yellen’s remarks question the timing of rate hikes given the uncertainty of improvements in the labor market.

Yellen called out the “considerable progress” the economy has made since the end of the Great Recession.

More jobs have been added during the recovery than initially lost in the downturn, the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.2% from a high of 10% in 2009 and job gains this year have averaged 230,000 per month.

“These developments are encouraging,” Yellen said. “But it speaks to the depth of the damage that, five years after the end of the recession, the labor market has yet to fully recover.”

She noted that the Fed is getting closer to its goals for the U.S. economic recovery, but there is still a ways to go as the jobless rate overstates the progress.

Figuring out how much labor “slack” still lingers in the economy is difficult. The Fed is looking beyond the simple unemployment rate to consider the labor force participation rate, the extent of part-time employment and the pace of hires and quits.

Previously, the Fed said it would keep interest rates near zero while unemployment remains above 6.5%. As unemployment hovers below that threshold, Yellen said the Fed will take into account a more holistic version of the labor market as it considers its future course of action and works to meet the agency’s dual mandate of maximum employment and low inflation.

Yellen’s comments reflect on the conference’s theme of labor market dynamics, which she considers “central to the conduct of monetary policy.”

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi spoke later in the day and said the ECB is ready to take further steps to stimulate a flagging recovery in the region.

“I told them that I don’t think there is a better time to be graduating as a business student,” he said. “The economy is back and looks like it is moving ahead full steam.”

Career services officers at undergraduate business programs have yet to release their official placement reports, but all signs are indicating that 2014 is shaping up to be yet another solid hiring season for recent Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) graduates. Job placement appears to be on par with last year, if not slightly better, and salaries are holding firm, with a premium going towards those with strong quantitative skills, according to interviews with career services directors at some of the top 20 business schools. Hiring in finance and consulting, the mainstays of the job market for recent business graduates, remains strong, with many companies snatching up students for their leadership development programs.

At Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, about 77% of students from the class of 2014 had secured a job when they graduated, a figure similar to last year, said Pamela Brown, senior director of the BBA Career Management Center at Goizueta.

Goizueta’s three biggest employers--Ernst & Young, PwC, and Deloitte--are sweeping up students, and there are about 35 companies that have hired at least two or more students this year. Median salaries are hovering around $60,000, a trend consistent with the last few years, Brown said.

“Steady is the word,” Brown said. “We’re right on par with where we’d like to be. Even in finance and consulting, the numbers are exactly the same as last year.”

That year-over-year consistency is mirrored in the job market at large for college graduates, according to the 2014 Student Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Nearly one-third of the class of 2014, or 30.1%, had secured a job by graduation, up just slightly from 29.8% last year, the survey showed. The average salary for a business major is $53,901, flat compared to last year, according to NACE's 2014 April Salary Survey report.

At undergraduate business programs, placement rates for business students tend to be much higher than they are for their liberal arts counterparts. For example, at Bentley--one of the largest undergraduate business programs in the Northeast, with about 1,000 students-- roughly 70% of the 2014 class was either employed or planning to attend graduate school at graduation, a figure up several percentage points from last year, Morrison said. "Some companies have been here literally 20 times per semester for recruiting," he said.

It's a similar picture at Washington University in St. Louis' Olin Business School, said Brad McLeod, senior associate dean of career advising. The percentage of students who secured a job at graduation is up about by about 4-5% over last year. That’s especially encouraging given that the 2014 BBA class is about 5% larger than last year’s, he said. Salaries are trending slightly higher than last year, but only "by a tick," he said.

“There has been a lot of negative press on the market for business students in the last few years, and I think we’re finally seeing a strong recovery,” McLeod said.

Mercy Eyadiel, the executive director for Market Readiness and Employment at Wake Forest University School of Business, said she has witnessed a strong turnaround in the undergraduate job market for business students since she started at the school three years ago. Back then, she and her staff were trying to rebuild interest among employers in the financial services sector. Many had forgone traditional fall recruiting, instead doing spring or just-in time hiring.

Fast forward to today and those same employers are no longer as hesitant about hiring, she said. Many are eager to secure a spot in the school's fall recruitment calendar, and even companies that traditionally don't recruit on campus have become more aggressive about securing talent, Eyadiel said.

For example, Oracle ORCL , the world's largest maker of database software, came to campus to recruit for the first time this year, making 34 job offers to students, 25 of which were accepted. That has helped contribute to Wake Forest's strong placement rate at graduation; 84% of business students had secured job offers or planned to go to graduate school, up two percentage points from last year, Eyadiel noted.

"Typically the largest number of offers we might have from a company is 10 to 15, and that is on the high side because most of our employers hire two or three students at a time," Eyadiel said. "When you get a company like Oracle making 34 offers, that's a pretty significant increase for us."

The internship season appears to be off to a strong start as well, though it is still too early to tell how many students have landed full-time offers through their summer jobs, career services officers said. At Wake Forest, 100% of students in the business and management program had secured an internship by graduation, Eyadiel said, with other majors not trailing far behind.

At Olin, the internship season has been "very strong," statistically tracking with the last few years, McLeod said. In a shift from previous years, a growing number of students are branching out from the typical finance and consulting internships, pursuing opportunities at venture capital firms and startups, McLeod noted.

"I'd be very surprised and awfully disappointed if we weren't close to 100% internship placement," McLeod said. "The internship market is pretty strong and I think that is reflective of the marketplace. Employers are being opportunistic and want a jump start on young business school talent."

• More from Poets&Quants:
  • The Top 100 Undergraduate Business Programs in the U.S.
  • What Business Majors Make At Graduation
  • Best Job Placement For Business Undergrads

On Tuesday morning, the Labor Department released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Report, which measures the rate at which businesses are hiring, laborers are quitting, and the total number of job openings in the country. It’s a great companion to the jobs report, and one that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has said is an important gauge of the health of the labor market.

Tuesday’s report showed the total number of job openings increased again in May to 4.6 million, up from 4.5 million in April and 4.2 million in March. This means there are more jobs open per unemployed worker today than at any time in the past six years. Check out the following chart from University of Michigan economist Mark Perry, which shows the extent of the progress on this front, especially in the past few months.

People are also quitting their jobs at a 15% higher rate than they were at this time last year, which shows that workers are more confident that they’ll be able to find work again if they leave their jobs. While the quit rate remains well below pre-recession norms, you can see that the labor market has made progress:

All of this is great news for the Federal Reserve, which seems to be successfully stimulating the job market without stoking inflation. Furthermore, bond and stock markets have been quiet all year, shrugging off the slow taper of QE bond purchases with the help of assurance from Janet Yellen that the Fed will not raise interest rates anytime soon.

It also means that economy watchers should be on the lookout for rising wages. While wage growth remains tame--the latest jobs report showed a 2% growth in wages year-over-year--growing job openings and a falling unemployment rate will inevitably begin to put pressure on wages to rise at some point soon.

In flush times when the markets are roaring, the world can seem like one big open marketplace. Companies can outsource jobs, rake in profits, and do business wherever they like. But when times are tough, and jobs and resources are tight, suddenly national borders again become more important, and the engine that fuels this rush into a global free-market economy can come grinding to a sudden halt.

It's a lesson business leaders have been learning firsthand since the Great Recession began six years ago, and some of our nation's most prominent CEOs don't see the trend abating soon. Recently I asked General Electric chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt where it had gotten tougher to do business since he took the helm of the company in 2001. His response: "Everywhere."

That's not just a commentary on his company's recent wrangling with the French government over the deal to purchase a major chunk of Alstom's operations. (For a closer look at cross-border acquisitions, read here.) Governments everywhere are displaying more protectionist tendencies, he says. It no longer matters if you are a good corporate citizen--now the No. 1 priority around the globe is employment. "Jobs are your only calling card today," says Immelt.

That dynamic is the logical result of a difficult economic environment worldwide--xenophobia often emerges in the wake of economic upheaval--and it's a wake-up call for zealots of the allegedly inevitable wave of globalization that has been prophesied in business schools and investment seminars for the past two decades: Despite a belief that we live in a more enlightened age of free trade (which may be true), corporations are constantly reminded that the promise of "free" trade definitely comes with a cost.

Graphic Source: U.S. Department of State
Problematic Policy? The U.S. keeps educating international students--but not retaining them.

American political leaders aren't helping the cause. In fact they're as guilty of erecting walls as the next country. Washington has all but given up on the idea of comprehensive immigration reform, even though nearly everyone agrees we're essentially kicking out U.S.-educated engineers and specialists as business leaders lament being unable to find qualified candidates to fill high-tech and other skilled jobs here in America.

And in the U.S. and around the world governments have continued to heap on new regulations. Add to the mix political uncertainty (look at the rise of the hard right in Europe) and a risk-averse business community post-2008, and you can see why companies have sat on the sidelines. "We're more nervous overall," says Tom Fanning, chairman, CEO, and president of electric utility Southern Co. "It causes people not to commit capital and causes business leaders not to hire."

But there finally are signs that business confidence is returning. Companies appear ready to plow money back into the economy. More than a third of the S&P 500 say they will spend more on capital expenditures this year than analysts expected, according to Thomson Reuters. Merger activity is running at a pace we haven't seen since before the Great Recession began.

And some governments are starting to rethink their policies for attracting enterprise. The World Bank does an annual ranking of the best and worst countries in which to do business, measuring things like how long it takes to start a business, get electricity, import products, or settle a commercial dispute. Over the past 11 years, the time frame for all those transactions has shrunk--substantially for many of the lowest-ranked nations. The gap between the top (Singapore) and the bottom (Chad, at No. 189) has narrowed considerably. "Countries are now aware how this red tape makes it harder for businesses, and makes them less likely to come and create jobs," says Rita Ramalho, who compiles the report for the World Bank. Perhaps the worst really is over and global markets--even Chad--will once again become hospitable to corporations.

This story is from the July 21, 2014 issue of Fortune.

But on the eve of America’s July 4th holiday, the Labor Department released its June Employment Situation Report, offering the strongest indication we’ve had in months that the economic recovery is accelerating and that recent news that the U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter was an aberration rather than a portent of further economic malaise.

The U.S. economy added 282,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 6.1, one of the strongest monthly readings we’ve had since the end of the recession. But dig deeper into the report and you’ll just keep finding more good news. Here are four reasons to celebrate the American job market this July 4th:

1. The long-term unemployment crisis is getting better: Perhaps the most pernicious effect of the financial crisis has been the explosion of long-term unemployment.

The number of long-term unemployed has been falling quickly in recent months. Sure, some of this has to do with people giving up looking for work altogether after Congress pulled the plug on unemployment benefits. But other data, like the fact that the number of discouraged workers--individuals who want to work but who aren’t currently looking for a job because they believe there are no jobs available--has fallen by 34% to 676,000 over the past year, says that some of these workers are finding employment again.

The improving situation for these workers, who are what economists call “marginally attached” to the workforce, can be also be seen in the rapid decline in the U-6 unemployment rate, which has fallen from 13.1% to 12.1% during 2014.

Some of these formerly discouraged workers may have turned to part-time work, as the number of people working part-time who wish to be working full-time increased by 275,000. But, of course, it’s better to have a part-time job than no job at all.

2. Employment gains were seen across every industry: From healthcare to retail to manufacturing, we’re seeing job growth in every sector of the economy. The biggest gains in June were in business and professional services, which saw an increase of 67,000 new jobs. These are high-paying positions, with an average hourly wage of $29.21, compared to $24.45 for jobs overall.

3. Pay is continuing to increase: While the economy has added jobs, they’ve tended to be lower-paying ones, which explains the fact that real average hourly earnings are lower today than at the end of the recession. But wages have begun to rise faster than inflation, and Thursday’s report confirmed that the trend is continuing, with average hourly earnings up 2% in the past 12 months.

4. The Employment Population Ratio held its gains: With America’s workforce getting older on average, we’d expect the ratio of workers to the overall population to decline slightly, but this figure plummeted during the recession, reflecting general economic weakness rather than just demographics.

But the ratio has turned around this year, giving credence to the idea that the economy is improving enough to bring workers back into the labor force.

Two new studies found that past participation in high school sports helps youngsters develop a host of crucial skills which give them a leg up as they enter the work world and achieve success for decades afterward.

Appearing in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies this week, Cornell's Kevin Kniffin and two other colleagues found that teenagers who played sports developed stronger leadership skills, worked better in teams and demonstrated more confidence.

“Participation in competitive youth sports ‘spills over’ to occupationally advantageous traits that persist across a person’s life,” Kniffin, postdoctoral research associate at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and lead researcher, said.

One study conducted by Kniffin, his Cornell colleague Brian Wansink and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville's Mitsuru Shmizu surveyed the views 0f 66 adults about their perceptions of those who played sports and those who did not. Those who sweated their afternoons away on the football field or on the lacrosse field were seen has having "significantly higher levels of leadership, self-confidence and self-respect."

“You see in the business press, every once a while, stories about the dominance of lacrosse players on Wall Street or the disproportionate number of hockey players on Wall Street,” Kniffin said. “Part of what this paper is getting at is this idea that there is something more there than social networking, something more than people liking other people because they have something in common.”

The second study, using data collected from more than 900 World War II veterans, examined the long-term correlation of participation in high school sports. Among other things, that study demonstrated a "positive relationship between participation in competitive youth sports and several measures of long-term personal success and pro-sociabilty."

And the 43 percent of male veterans who played varsity sports scored had careers of “higher status” and more success in upper management jobs and those in the trades. The veterans didn't name the sports they played.

“People who played high school sports more than 50 years after high school still seemed to demonstrate this persistent profile of more leadership, self respect, self-confidence than people who were not part of high school sports,” Kniffin said.

Elizabeth Covay Minor, researcher director at the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research at Michigan State University, was not part of the study but said the findings reinforced the notion that sports have a range of benefits that go well beyond high school.

“Based on the work that I have done in looking at extracurricular activities and elementary school students, it makes sense that sports could benefit students as they enter the work world,” Minor said in an e-mail interview. “In elementary school, participation in sports is related to an increase in students' social and behavioral skills/soft skills--things like task persistence, attentiveness, organization, and flexibility. These are skills that are valued by employers. The argument that we make in our article "After the Bell: Participation in Extracurricular Activities, Classroom Behavior, and Academic Achievement" is that extracurricular activities resemble classroom settings in many ways such as learning to deal with successes and failures, independence, and role specificity. It seems that the work world has a similar setting and similar skills would be valued.”

Francis J. Yammarino, director of the Center for Leadership Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton said the studies “aren’t perfect” given both depended on self-reported data and the first sample size was small. But he said the conclusions echo earlier research which has found participating in sports at a various levels leads to brighter future.

“These are all individual differences variables from limited samples so don't go crazy over-interpreting the results,” Yammarino said in an e-mail interview. “In general, the studies' conclusions are reasonable but subject to a number of limitations and alternative explanations.”

Kniffin was careful not to suggest the study would lead to a rush of youngsters joining the football team or hiring executives to consider sports over other factors like work experience or a college degree. But he said it may help change the long-held stereotype, often portrayed in Hollywood, that only washed-up losers mention their glory days on the gridiron or scoring that winning goal in the state championship.

“People who played sports in high school–I wouldn't say they have the last laugh, but you get my picture,” said Kniffin, who considered titling one of their papers Revenge of the Jocks. “They have advantages that accrue well beyond high school. They include advantages in the hiring process and, much more broadly, their career paths tend to be higher status and they appear to donate time and money more frequently throughout the lives.”

Read enough help-wanted advertisements, and you'll soon realize that they all basically sound the same. Jargon like “detail-oriented” and “self-starter” is so overused that the positions advertised begin to sound unremarkable: part of the expected landscape of hunting for a job.

But if you stop and think about what all of these buzzwords are signaling, you'll realize how much information you just might miss if you fail to read between the lines. First of all, when employers fall back on the same old jargon to advertise positions, it could very well be that they actually have no idea what they are looking for. They just know they have a spot to fill.

“Jargon is our way to grow lazier decision making in corporate cultures,” says Kevin Fleming, owner of Grey Matters, a neuroscience-based executive development and coaching firm based in Jackson Hole and Tulsa. “We use these words to cover up something. It could also be a way to hide some ambivalence.”

For instance, an employer may ask for two qualities that seem to conflict — such as “entrepreneurial” and “team player” — because the hiring manager and the human resources director have different ideas about what the position requires. Or, the employer may simply have unrealistic expectations of all the qualities that a single individual could possess.

“The hiring managers are thinking about the ideal person. ‘If I could get everything I wanted on my Christmas wish list, what would I put on that list?'” says Kathryn Ullrich, a recruiter based in Silicon Valley and author of Getting to the Top: Strategies for Career Success. “They’ll take the best attributes of the five best people they have.”

Or perhaps, confusing jargon suggests that the company has an ill-defined mission or strategy. “Most people have no idea what the development plans really are; they don’t know where they’re going,” says Fleming.

With that in mind, we’ve asked Fleming, Ullrich and other career experts to help us decode the most commonly used jargon in job ads, often the same buzzwords that fill up resumes.

Detail-oriented. “Watch out for control freaks,” Fleming warns. Unless the position involves detail at its core — like a forensic accountant or administrative assistant — this phrase hints that your every move will be scrutinized and second-guessed.

Team player. It may sound innocuous, but be wary that this innocuous phrase really means that you’ll take whatever the bosses dish out, “for the team.” “Team player is code phrase for someone who will allow us to do whatever we want to you,” Fleming explains.

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Fast-paced work environment. This means that the employer wants high productivity at all costs and you’ll be fielding a steady flow of emergencies. “Fast paced means you’re going to work more hours than we’re paying you,” interprets Ullrich. Some industries, such as journalism or communications, are truly fast paced, but you should already know that going into those fields. “Fast-paced work environment means it’s a little bit of a crazy office,” says Kate Giannini, senior recruitment manager at Edelman Public Relations in San Francisco.

Multitask. Neuroscience tells us it’s actually impossible for the human brain to multitask successfully. By trying simultaneously to complete different tasks, we reduce our performance and effectiveness at each individual job. “Multitasking is an utter violation of reality. What they’re trying to say is, ‘We may switch up your job description without telling you and we want you to be okay with it,’ ” Fleming says. You’ll need to be able to quickly prioritize initiatives and figure out which competing task is the most important, Ullrich says.

Self-starter. “It’s saying, ‘When we don’t give you any sense of direction, we want you to pull it out of thin air,'” interprets Fleming. “Self starter is a code phrase for, ‘Can you make ambivalence and lack of direction work?’ ”

Results-oriented or self-motivated. “What this really means is that they want someone with incredible drive, often used to opaquely reference sales positions where you will have to work to make commission,” says Shawn O’Connor, founder and chief executive officer of Stratus Careers, a career counseling and training firm based in New York.

Early-stage or venture-backed. While these phrases legitimately describe startups backed by venture capitalists, it’s important to understand the subtext. “There aren’t a lot of resources; you may not get paid a lot; and we hope you’re going to work for that Holy Grail of going public or some successful exit,” Ullrich translates.

Experience in an entrepreneurial setting. Similarly, any job ad that describes an "entrepreneurial position" will demand a willingness to do whatever task needs to be done from the person who takes the gig. “This job is definitely not the right fit for someone who wants clearly delineated responsibilities or doesn’t want to have to take out his own trash from his desk,” says O’Connor.

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Creativity for "out of the box" solutions. If you relish charting your own course, respond to the job ads that reference creativity, problem solving and “out of the box” thinking. “That’s jargon for: we don’t have it figured out yet,” Ullrich says.

To be sure, any one of these phrases might appear in an ad for a position that you’d happily fill. But when you understand the hidden meaning, you’ll be in a better position to decide whether the tradeoffs that come with this job make sense for you. And don’t expect the jargon to disappear from help wanted ads any time soon.

“Job ads are full of jargon for the same reason sugar is part of good fattening food: it feels good,” Fleming says. “There’s a little bit of a high when you say the job you’re looking for has impact and has a bandwidth that’s powerful.”