GREEN SHOOTS.

The macroeconomic news is still distressing, and the European welfare states still haven't grasped all the implications of the government budget constraint.  Life goes on, on the rails and off them.

Intermodal numbers are somewhat better. Compared with a year ago, containers and trailers handled are up 4.4 percent for the latest week, 2.3 percent for September, and 5.4 percent for the first nine months. At 96 percent of 2006 levels, intermodal is close to setting all-time records.

Now let’s peel back the onion a little bit. What’s hot? In number of cars loaded during September, it’s coal (up 6,400 cars), primary metal products (up 5,300 cars), and motor vehicles and parts (up 4,400 cars). In percentage terms, the biggest September gainer was petroleum and byproducts, up 16 percent. In other words, stuff related to energy and heavy industries.

What’s not doing well? Grain carloads were down 16,800 carloads, or 18 percent, in September, continuing a slide that began three months ago. Shipments of primary forest products continue to decline, as are those of waste and nonferrous scrap, which is partly a byproduct of construction.

Put this together and you have an economy that continues to move forward, with no help at all from the once-vital construction sector. Or as [Association of American Railroads'] John Gray, the senior vice president, puts it: “Rail traffic is consistent with an economy that is probably still growing, but far more slowly than any of us would want.”

I’ll take good news any way I can get it, and this is good. Meanwhile, railroads added almost 1,200 jobs last month, to 160,100, and another 11,100 freight cars came out of storage. Alas, 17 percent of the North American fleet remains in limboland.

The last time we had a financial panic of the sort we saw in 2008 was 1929, and you know what came next. We’re clearly not headed there now. But financial recessions, as opposed to general business recessions, are notoriously slow to unwind and resistant to political fixes. To keep your eye on the economy in the months ahead, watch those rail carloadings closely.

Closer to home, the fall job fair is doing better.

The biannual Northern Illinois University Full-Time Job Fair still is less busy than it was in 2008.

But for the first time since the economic recession, job seekers such as NIU alumnus Geoff Maxfield said the job fair showed more hope and signs of life.

Maxfield said the past few fairs he attended at the NIU Convocation Center seemed to offer more to people with computer science or business degrees, which his experience in communications didn’t fit.

“It’s finally opened up a little more,” he said. “Finally being able to talk with people is really helpful. It lets them know there’s more to me than just a piece of paper.”

More than 150 businesses registered this year, an almost 30 percent jump from a year ago, said Mary Myers, NIU Career Services associate director.

“We ran out of room on the arena floor, so we had to move some of them to the south lobby,” she said.

The fair still has a ways to go before attracting the nearly 250 employers that registered in 2008, but Myers said the growth is a sign of the economy’s eventual recovery.

She said it’s difficult to determine how many hires actually come from the job fair because that information is gathered on a self-reporting basis.

But some of the businesses – banks especially, Myers said – have come back to the fair. She said the loyalty employers have shown is encouraging for her and job seekers.

“A lot of companies have chosen to be here. They’ve cut out other schools, but they still consider us a major recruiting point,” she said.

I hope that the strategic planners are carefully evaluating the reasons employers give for continuing to recruit at Northern Illinois rather than elsewhere.