According to the Labor Department, the U.S. economy added 290,000 jobs during April, bringing to nearly 500,000 the number of jobs created since the beginning of 2010–yet another sign a recovery is underway.

Better yet, new jobs came in a variety of U.S. industries – manufacturing, health care, leisure and hospitality to name just a few – and in government, thanks to Uncle Sam hiring temporary workers to help with the 2010 Census.

The recent jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department brought news that unemployment rates for older workers remain lower than for other age groups.

But the news wasn’t all good. Once older workers, especially boomers over 55, lose a job, it takes them longer to find a new one than any other age group.

Despite a brighter overall picture, people ages 45 to 54 continue to be caught in a “perfect storm” of lower-than-expected earnings and retirement savings at the same time family demands and expenses, are rising.

Read the rest of this post at SecondAct.com: Job picture mixed for older workers.

Is this a good time for a self-employed writer to consider getting a full-time job?

It’s a question more of my freelance friends are starting to ask.

It’s not the ideal time to look for full-time work in the publishing industry. Newspapers are hanging on by a thread and magazines aren’t doing much better. New media outlets appear to be holding up OK but with untested business models, it’s too soon to tell how well they’ll make out in a strained economy.

Working for yourself has advantages, especially when times are good. But when clients start cutting back work, dropping their rates or canceling freelancer budgets all together, it’ a different story. One freelance friend I heard from yesterday is considering looking for a full-time job because her work load has dropped 50 percent this year. A writer in my favorite writer’s group has a job offer on the table that would let her continue to freelance on the side but child care would be an issue so she’s not sure if she should take it.

What should they do? Every writer’s work/life situation is different enough that chucking self-employment for a steady gig is a decision only they can make.

But there are common pros and cons they can consider while deciding what to do.

YES, TAKE THE JOB

• You’ll have a steady income without having to constantly market your services
• You’ll have some level of benefits
• You’ll learn new skills, which could come in handy if you decide to switch back to freelancing at some later date
• You’ll be able to leave the job at the office and have more time for other things
• You’ll have more job security, although that could depend on who you go to work for
• You can still freelance on the side if you want to

NO, DON’T TAKE THE JOB

• Your time will no longer be your own
• Chances are you’ll have to commute at least part of the time
• When it comes to what you’re working on, someone else will be calling the shots
• If you don’t opt to keep writing on the side, you’ll have to go through the process of winding down your freelance business
• You won’t have the same level of business expenses to write off

The beauty of the 21st century workplace is that employers don’t expect anyone to stay in a job forever. So even if you decide that current economic conditions dictate that you to take a full-time gig, you can always go back to freelancing at a later date.

If you’re thinking of trading in the freelance life for a steady job, what factors are you taking into account?

I was bummed. But I’d just finished writing here about smart things freelancers can do to weather bad times. So I had to take my own advice. Later the same day, I needed to send a separate pitch to a different editor I’ve written for a lot lately but at a rate that’s lower that what I usually make. I’d just turned in a bunch of stories that this editor really liked. So thinking about the client I’d just lost, I wrote the pitch letter and at the end asked for a raise. I heard back the next day – the publication agreed to up my rate by 20 percent. It gets better. I called the editor to say thanks, and in the course of conversation, she mentioned another publication that might be interested in using me and offered to pass along my name.

The moral of the story: Don’t get hung up on bad news. Don’t be afraid to ask. Remember to say thank you. And sometimes it pays to pick up the phone.

According to published reports like this one, the Wall Street Journal’s new luxury glossy – the working title is Pursuits – has already lined up advertisers and a tentative 2009 launch date. Mansueto Ventures originally set a May 2008 launch date for Upstart, a quarterly for startups,though according to this Mediaweek report, the date is now “undetermined.”

If the economy’s still OK, I predict they’ll get the advertising base they need to greenlight their respective ventures. But if we’re in a recession, don’t be surprised if these companies hold off a while longer, or scrap plans altogether.

More details:

• The Wall Street Journal’s new venture will be a high-end glossy quarterly for the super rich. The editor is Tina Gaudoin, a lifestyle editor and columnist for the Times of London who became editor of that paper’s high-end glossy, Luxx, last June. Gaudoin came under fire this week after a Columbia Journalism Review story questioned her journalistic ethics for quoting a business partner in a Times column and failing to disclose the relationship.
• In addition to UpStart, Mansueto is starting FastCompany.tv, an online TV network covering the tech scene with interviews, reviews and news on “the latest technology products, and lifestyle programming.”
• IDG, publisher of PC World, Computerworld, CIO and other tech titles, is preparing to relaunch The Industry Standard, the former Internet trade that died along with the rest of the dot-com business back in 2001. IDG was a majority stakeholder of The Standard and acquired the magazine’s remaining assets after it went bankrupt. Now IDG plans to relaunch The Standard as an online-only publication and is searching for an editor in chief. The company’s posted the position on an IDG careers page that’s accessible only to people who register at the site.
• Meanwhile, The Industry Standard’s former editor in chief Jonathan Weber is busy with his own plans to spin off a print magazine from NewWest.net, the regional daily news site he started after leaving Silicon Valley for Missoula, Montana. Weber weighed in on the print v. online media debate earlier this month in this guest editorial in the Times of London’s TimesOnline.com.