Seems to me the spin sort of works physiologically for some employers. I know of a few companies that have been holding off hiring in the bay area, waiting to see if the economy gets worse. Funny thing is just today those few companies suddenly opened these positions this afternoon, and their respective head hunters have been data mining some of the people on my LinkedIn contacts today. We just hired a few college grads today too. Much easier these days, since we don’t get to much competition with the “I want to work at a company that pays me to write crappy facebook apps” companies.