The week that was on the jobs scene…

Monday: IHS Global Insight’s U.S. Regional Insight Group foresees a 9.90 percent average unemployment rate in the St. Louis region for the fourth quarter. IHS Global’s analysts also predict “metro areas will be dealing with the aftermath of the great recession for some time.”

Tuesday: The CareerCast.com/JobSerf Employment Index reports the national market for white collar jobs declined by .08 percent in September. These days, this passes for good news. In August, white collar hiring plummeted by 14 percent. “While nervous white-collar job seekers can take heart that hiring activity isn’t experiencing the same free fall it did a year ago, hopes of a rapid, sustained recovery in job availability may be on hold for the near future,” the outsourcing firm on-line career service said in a statement. P.S. — More good news, sort of … By falling somewhere in the middle, St. Louis fails to get a mention in the index’s list of best and worst cities for execs to get a job,

Wednesday: Word comes the unemployment rate in the St. Louis Metropolitan area, 10.2 percent, has hit double figures for the first time since 1983. The news spurs a wide-ranging debate among the denizens of stltoday.com about the relative merits of, in no particular order, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. As we’ve come to expect from our readers, it was high-minded discourse (”People like you make my stomach turn”) of the first order.

Thursday: The recession is over! The recession is over! So says the government in announcing the gross domestic product grew by 3.5 percent from July through September. Word to the wise: Hold off before following through on the purchase of that Porsche you’ve had your eye on the past couple of years … A Thursday afternoon economic summit at Saint Louis University asked “Are We Out of the Woods Yet” of three experts. The short answer: No. As best anyone can tell, the local job market won’t start picking up until the third quarter of 2010.

Even then, Jack Strauss – the director of SLU’s Simon Center for Regional Forecasting – predicted many of the re-employed “won’t be satisfied with their career path. They won’t be in jobs that were as fulfilling as their last job.”

Friday: The Obama administration announces that the federal economic stimulus package has created or saved 650,000 jobs. Let the high-minded discourse begin anew…