New research reveals that 41 percent of students do not feel well-informed about the range of careers open to them. Only 13 percent feel their education institutions have fully equipped them to make career decisions. CompTIA surveyed more than 1,000 students to understand what motivates them.

The vast majority of respondents showed themselves to have skills employers want. They are hard working (89 percent), quick learners (79 percent), good at solving problems (76 percent), have communication skills (71 percent) and are able to work in a team (78 percent). Furthermore, most students are ambitious with a clear idea of what they expect from their future professions. A good salary (85 percent), variety (66 percent) and ongoing development (62 percent) are the most important considerations.

Respondents in the CompTIA survey want schools and universities to do a lot more to help them understand career options:

• 55 percent want information integrated into school lessons about what careers different subjects can lead to

• 61 percent feel they need more information about careers other than those directly related to their field of study

• 51 percent want better careers advice at school or university.

This trend is particularly notable in IT and technology, which is struggling to attract the 110,400 new entrants a year it needs to keep up with the industry’s growth.

According to Kevin Streater, executive director for IT Intelligence at the Open University:

“For far too long there has been a false assumption that IT is too technical for most people to get into. The reality is that anyone who is educated, motivated and passionate about technology should consider a career in the industry. At its core, it is very much a career where you can keep learning, keep developing and keep your hands on technology. Contrary to popular opinion there are plenty of unfilled vacancies for young people, and plenty of young people with exactly the right aptitude and ambitions to fill them. The problem is largely one of making young people aware of these opportunities and how to get into them.”

A graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law was laid off by a law firm in New York, but was able to receive $405 a week in unemployment benefits from the state. To make a little extra money to help pay the bills, she started a blog and used Google AdSense. To make a long story short, her benefits were cut to $300 a week. It had taken her 3 months to earn $100 with AdSense.

She was sent a form to fill out and send to her "employer," and when she called the Department of Labor to get some answers about that, she was told that she shouldn’t have claimed the AdSense payment to begin with because it was considered "residual," which would not make her ineligible for benefits. Fair enough. Unfortunatley for Karin, it only got more complicated from there.

"The call prompted Karin to file another claim with the state and to attach a letter stating she was running a blog and that the Google AdSense revenue it generated was her only source of income," explains David K. Randall of Forbes.com. "A few days later, she received a letter from the DOL informing her that it had launched an investigation of her "business" to determine whether she remained eligible for benefits."

"Karin called the DOL again and says this time she was told that the state considered her self-employed, which would require her to claim earnings each time she received an AdSense check," continues Randall. "She called back to get another opinion, and Karin says this time she was informed by yet another state official that she needed to declare that she was working every time that she updated her blog."

Karin is apparently not getting benefits as long as the investigation is going on, and she hasn’t even made $250 from AdSense.

The situation would likely vary from state to state, but at least in New York, unemployment and AdSense blogs seem to equal nothing but headaches for everybody involved. Mike Masnick at TechDirt does a pretty good job of assessing the situation. "It’s really stunning how various labor departments are simply ill-equipped to handle a modern labor force," he says.

Masnick has his own horror story about out of state labor departments seeking money for an employee that his company hasn’t employed in years. They money sought after is apparently for time that this person wasn’t working there.

This is the third consecutive month of declines for the U.S. as a whole. The May decline saw 579,000 fewer jobs listed than in the same period a year ago. A total of 3.8 million job openings were listed in May, accounting for 2.5 for every 100 people in the labor force, down from a high of 2.9 a year ago.

"May shows a slight recovery from the large April decline, but overall the number of online advertised vacancies has been on a downward trend for the past several months. The demand for labor will likely be sluggish this summer," said Gad Levanon, economist at The Conference Board.

"This lackluster job outlook is clearly a contributing factor in consumer confidence shrinking to its lowest point in nearly two decades, as reported by The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey."

In May, 2.7 million of the total number of job postings was new, while the rest were reposted from April.

Alaska had the highest ad rate in the country for the ninth month in a row and Wyoming had the lowest supply/demand rate. The number of advertised vacancies dropped year- over- year in 43 states, and all states had a slowing in growth rate.

States where job seekers are continuing to see a large number of job openings include Alaska, Nevada and Colorado. Half of the top 10 sates with the most ad vacancies are west of the Mississippi.

States where the number of unemployed people looking for work dramatically exceeded the number of online job openings included Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Mississippi.

California, the state with the largest labor force in the nation, totaled 505,700 online advertised jobs, down nearly 200,000 or 28 percent from the May 2007 level. In Texas, the number of online advertised vacancies was down 13 percent, and in New York the number dropped 16 percent from year ago levels.