"We are an [information technology] company," said Gordon Woodrow, a CarePartners vice president and the former regional head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
"We need the expertise of people who handle data and handle security," he said.
And with moves like that in companies all over the country, the unemployment rate dipped to 8.5 percent, the lowest in the last six months.
"It may not be a lean, mean jobs machine just yet, but the labor market is finally starting to pick up steam," Joel Naroff, of Naroff Economics in Bucks County, wrote in an e-mail.
Friday's news will likely take on increased importance in Washington as the election season picks up and as Congress returns from its recess and renews debate on whether to extend federal emergency unemployment benefits.
Friday's jobs report, said Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, "provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression."
December marked the fourth anniversary of the start of the recession in December 2007. Since then, the number of unemployed people has risen to more than 13 million, with persistent and seemingly intractable long-term unemployment.
When the recession ended in June 2009, the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent. It rose to 10.1 percent in October 2009, before beginning to trend down.
"The economy must add 13.1 million jobs over the next three years - 364,000 each month - to bring unemployment down to 6 percent," University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici wrote in an e-mail.
"Many businesses remain reluctant to hire," he wrote. "They don't expect a recession," he said, "but are gearing for persistent, subpar growth in the United States, slower growth in Asia, and a recession in Europe."
Taken in tandem, two telling statistics - the median and the average length of unemployment - show the recession's stubborn legacy.
