According to recently released private and government surveys, despite news of the recession abating, job openings are still very low. This trend will keep the unemployment rate high in spite of fewer incidence of layoffs.

Some industries such as small businesses are still unwilling to hire new workers. Instead they are encouraging their current employees to produce more.

However, there also industries that are opening their doors to new hires. According to government reports and job search sites, the demand for information technology professionals is growing. A Labor Department’s employment report said that the computer systems sector added about 4,500 jobs in October.

The same goes for sales personnel. Many companies believe that they will increase their revenue by hiring more sales people.

According to a Conference Board’s Help Wanted Online report released last week, sales jobs saw the largest increase in vacancies among the 10 largest occupations, with a jump of about 11 percent.

Some companies are also adding to their human resources personnel.

According to Phil Haynes, managing director of AllianceQ, an employers’ association that includes companies such as Starbucks Corp., Bank of America Corp. and Intuit Inc., “We’ve seen a real spike in the hiring of contract recruiters. The recruiters come before the jobs.”

But as a whole, the employment situation is in terrible condition. A Labor department report shows that there are about 6.1 unemployed workers, on average, competing for one job opening. That’s down slightly from 6.2 last month, but still a large jump from 1.7 workers per opening back in December 2007.

The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey said that at the end of September, employers advertised about 2.5 million job openings, up slightly from the previous month. Still, that’s almost half of the 4.8 million job openings in June 2007.

The unemployment rate remains high even as the economy grew by 3.5 percent in the July-September quarter – the strongest signal yet now that the recession is over – leading many economists to believe that the U.S. will experience a jobless recovery. A similar situation had already happened during the recession in 1991 and 2001. During that time, the unemployment rate did not peak until 15 months and 19 months respectively, after the slump ended.