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According to a recent survey, the recovery is in full swing in America’s largest cities. Last week, Gallup released results of its Job Creation Index for the 50 largest metropolitan regions in the United States.

The results showed that companies in every city were hiring more often than they were firing. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the nine U.S. metropolitan regions where workers think hiring is strongest.

See the nine cities >

An examination of these cities suggests that workers have reason to be confident. The vast majority had among the best employment conditions in the country. Nearly every city had either excellent current employment rates, major declines in unemployment rates in the past year, or both.

The Job Creation Index scores assigned by Gallup reflect the difference between the number of workers reporting their businesses were hiring compared to those who believed people were being let go. According to the report, these nine cities received Job Creation Index scores of 20 or better, meaning the percentage of employees who believed their companies were hiring was at least 20% more than those who believed their employers were looking to makes cuts to the payroll.

Of these nine cities, six had unemployment rates well below the national average of 8.3%. Richmond, Va., reported an unemployment rate of 6.6% in January. Oklahoma City’s unemployment rate of 5.9% is the seventh-lowest among the 100 largest cities in the U.S.

While a low unemployment rate can make a worker feel positive about his or her job market, having a low rate does not mean employers are hiring at a faster rate than the rest of the country. Declines in unemployment show that the number of unemployed are decreasing, usually because corporations are increasing the number of people on their payroll. According to the report, six of the these cities’ unemployment rates improved a great deal, falling more than 10% in the past year alone.

Most of these cities’ labor markets remained fairly stable during the recession with relatively few job losses. Five of the nine either will almost recover or will have fully recovered jobs lost during the recession by the fourth quarter of 2012.

In addition to Gallup’s Job Creation Index, 24/7 Wall St. examined unemployment data from January 2011 and January 2012, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Declines in employment from prerecession peaks and projected recovery of jobs by the fourth quarter of 2012 also were considered, based on analysis by IHS Global Insight.

9. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.

Job creation index: 20
Unemployment rate (Jan. 2012): 9.1%
Change in unemployment (Jan. 2011 – Jan. 2012): -15.7%

According to 36% of those surveyed in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan region, the city is hiring. That is among the highest rates in the 50 cities included in Gallup’s poll. In the past year, the unemployment rate in the region fell from 10.8% to 9.1%. While the current unemployment rate is still higher than the national average, the improvement was one of the biggest in the country.

8. San Antonio, Tex.

Job creation index: 20
Unemployment rate (Jan. 2012): 7.3%
Change in unemployment (Jan. 2011 – Jan. 2012): -6.4%

San Antonio is tied with Houston and Memphis for having the greatest share of residents who report employers are hiring, at 38%. Although the city’s economy has suffered quite a bit in recent years, it is currently doing quite well. All of the jobs lost during the recession will have been recovered by the end of 2012, and some new ones will have been added as well. San Antonio is rated first on Milken Institute’s list of metropolitan areas that are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth.

7. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Tex.

Job creation index: 20
Unemployment rate (Jan. 2012): 7.6%
Change in unemployment (Jan. 2011 – Jan. 2012): -12.6%

From its prerecession peak, Houston lost just 4.6% of jobs, one of the smallest percentages among America’s largest metropolitan region. By the end of this year, the Houston area is projected to more than recover all of the jobs it has lost. The unemployment rate in Houston fell by 12.6% since January 2011 to January 2012. And at 7.6% it is now among the lowest in the country. However, only 18% of those surveyed believed their company was in the process of firing people.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The official March Non-Farm Payrolls report comes out Friday, but we’ll get a nice sample tomorrow.

It turns out out that auto sales correlate very nicely with jobs (not too surprisingly). Here’s the chart we ran last month, comparing auto sales/the population and the unemployment rate.

Anyway, this number comes out tomorrow, and analysts are actually looking for a slight pullback from last month’s 15.03 million seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales to just 14.6 million this month.

We’ll be watching this number all day tomorrow, from when Chrysler reports early on to when the last automaker reports in the afternoon, and then we’ll be in better position to make an educated guess about Friday’s jobs report.

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Economists at the NY Fed have come up with an alternative to the standard Okun’s Law that sees the unemployment rate falling well below consensus.

Where Okun’s Law relates unemployment to GDP, their “bathtub model” emphasizes the importance of outflows from unemployment.

These outflows will increase thanks to (1) acquisition of skills to meet new employment demands; (2) decreasing numbers of long-term unemployed; (3) unemployed people who decide not to re-enter the market—notably Baby Boomers and women.

As long as the economy keeps expanding, these trends will steadily bring down the unemployment rate to 6.5 percent by 2014 and as low as 4.7 percent by 2018.

Economists Jonathan McCarthy, Simon Potter and Ayşegül Şahin admit that, yes, their outlook may seem optimistic:

This series of labor market posts has examined the possible paths of the unemployment rate if the current expansion lasts beyond the postwar average of fifty-nine months. Of course, readers of this post may consider the assumption that the current expansion will last at least until mid-2014 as optimistic. However, once one assumes an ongoing expansion, then it seems likely that the unemployment rate will continue to fall more quickly than predicted by consensus forecasts based on a moderate growth outlook. Whether or not this fall in the unemployment rate produces fast overall growth in the economy depends on the speed at which the employment-to-population ratio increases and the productivity of the workers added as the labor market expands. The flow-based approach we have taken to study the labor market appears superior to the more aggregate approach taken by many forecasters using Okun’s Law. Moreover, even though flow rates have declined in recent years, the U.S. labor market remains dynamic by international standards. By examining flows as well as stocks in the labor market, we come to conclusions that differ from the conventional wisdom about how difficult it might be to reduce so-called structural unemployment, as we showed in our analysis of unemployed construction workers.

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“Maybe,” answered Shiller to Daily Ticker’s Aaron Task earlier this week.

It’s not the greatest answer in the world.  But it’s not a “No.”

Remember, Robert Shiller was the genius who predicted the dot.com bubble of the late 90′s in his book Irrational Exuberance.  He also predicted the housing bubble.  So, when Shiller talks about bubbles, people listen and markets move.

“There’s always a chance of another technology bubble,” Shiller added.

However, he wasn’t willing to commit to calling the current frenzy for tech stock a bubble for several reasons.  Among them, Shiller thinks investors are being held back because the economy is only slowly coming back and unemployment levels remain high.

But, he added: “We’ve got an exciting thing going.  All of the new gadgets are just so breathtaking.  There’s going to be huge fortunes to be made.  That kind of excitement I do feel in the air.”

“I wish I understood human psychology better than I do,” Shiller modestly said earlier.

Later  in the interview, Shiller added “I would still put money in the stock market right now.  But not overwhelmingly.  This is the time to be reasonably diversified.”

Here’s the full interview courtesy of Yahoo’s Daily Ticker:

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Richard Russell, writer of the Dow Theory Letters, is just looking for the right time to buy stocks.

But that time isn’t now.  And until that time comes, Russell will be keeping his wealth in gold.

He writes in King World News:

What I want to illustrate is that great fortunes are made at super-bear market lows.  But you must have the money at the lows.  Which is why gold is so singular and valuable.  If you have gold at the bottom of the next bear market, you can exchange it for a collection of great common stocks or funds, and then sit back and relax.

You are then betting on the lasting power of the US.  If the US comes back, you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams.  But you have to have the guts to hang on to your gold.  And you need patience — the patience of ten men.

And when the time comes, things will get messy before they get good.

And I wonder — is there a super bear market waiting for us somewhere in the future?  The great ride from the end of WWII to today has never been fully corrected.  Some day it will be.  And impossible bargains in stocks will be lying around — with very few willing or solvent buyers.

…My thinking is that sooner or later we will be subject to a major correction (bear market) that will wipe out or correct 60 years of inflation and leveraging.  When that happens, I want to own the only kind of money that the Fed can’t destroy.

Read Russell’s entire commentary at KingWorldNews.com.

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