U.S. unemployment dropped to a near-three-year low of 8.3 percent in January on an unexpected hiring surge by the country's private employers, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The good news wasn't shared by all midlife workers, though. Despite the overall downward trend, the jobless rate for workers 45 and older rose slightly, to 6.6 percent in January, from 6.3 percent in November and December, according to the labor bureau. However, the unemployment rate for workers 55 and older dipped to 5.9 percent, the lowest since February 2009.

In late 2009, friends Pam Godwin (left) and Karen Amster-Young (right) felt a little stuck. They wondered when they'd stopped exploring new ways to fill their soul, stomach and sense of self. With a shared feeling of restlessness, they decided to change things up.

So one night, three cocktails deep, the two fortysomethings made a pledge to try something new, fun, challenging, or ridiculous every week for a year -- and document the ups and downs along the way. The52Weeks blog was born.

I was having a latte at a coffee house the other day when a young female voice appeared on the house stereo, singing a ballad of love and loss that sounded vaguely familiar. It took a moment to realize the song was "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," and that it was originally written and sung by Bob Dylan on the 1975 album Blood on the Tracks, his vinyl saga of a painful marital breakup. This twentysomething sounded a bit young to have gone through that ordeal, but still, there was something fresh and wistful in her delivery, as if she could see ahead to future heartbreak.

I'll look for you in old Honolulu, San Francisco, Ashtabula

There was a time when the toughest question you might encounter during a job interview was "What's your biggest flaw?"

These days, companies such as Google, Amazon and Trader Joe's include questions in job interviews that are tricky, challenging or just plain off the wall.

After reimagining Mexican cuisine with her Border Grill restaurants in Southern California and Las Vegas and competing on Bravo's Top Chef Masters, chef Susan Feniger says she's always thinking of new ways to reinvent herself -- and her food.

As gas prices continue to march toward $4 a gallon, cars on display this weekend at the Portland International Auto Show offer a range of new, fuel-efficient models that not only are easy on the environment but also on the wallet.

The 2012 vehicles include dozens of fuel-efficient cars that get 35 miles or more per gallon; high-end hybrids; all-electric cars that travel 80 to 100 miles between charges; and even a car powered by natural gas.

If you're in the 40-to-55 age group and concerned about your job prospects and retirement investments, chances are that you've been awaiting the U.S. Commerce Department's latest data on economic growth. Those numbers were just released this morning, and while the picture definitely is getting better, the question economists are asking is whether the economy is improving fast enough.

The good news is that the economy definitely is on the rise, with the nation's Gross Domestic Product rising in the fourth quarter of 2011 at an estimated annual rate of 2.8 percent. That's up from 1.8 percent in the third quarter, and it's the biggest surge the nation has seen in the past one-and-a-half years. Additionally, exports of goods and services increased 4.7 percent in Q4, another sign that economic growth is picking up. For the first time, the nation's economy has regained the size that it had before the recession of 2008-2009.

In an age of online job applications, many people think that mid-life job changers don't have to submit a cover letter with a resume because harried human-resources staff won't have time to read it.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Done right, a cover letter can hook an HR staffer or hiring manager from the opening sentence, especially the letter articulates why you're qualified for the job, what you can do for the company's bottom line or who you already know there who could vouch for your awesomeness.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it now, but when Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was released in the U.S. in 2008, I chose not to buy it, despite all the glowing newspaper reviews and the raves from friends who said it was the equal of Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park. I couldn't get my head around the idea of a detective novel set in Sweden, a nation I associated with strong coffee, lingonberry jam and difficult-to-assemble chairs from Ikea rather than grisly crimes, sordid secrets and suspense. After someone loaned me a copy, though, I belatedly enlisted in the legion of Larsson fans who made the late author's three novels -- and the movies based on them, including the current English-language version of Dragon Tattoo with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara -- into an international phenomenon.

But after reading Jan-Erik Pettersson's Stieg Larsson: The Real Story of the Man Who Played With Fire, I no longer feel so foolish. Pettersson informs readers that an acquisitions editor at the Swedish publishing company to whom Larsson initially sent Dragon Tattoo and its sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, returned the manuscripts unread with a generic rejection letter attached. I'm guessing that unnamed editor has spent a lot of sleepless nights, mentally calculating the bonanza that he or she passed up. (According to Larsson's official website, his books have sold 63 million copies worldwide.)

This week was full of encouraging news for midlife athletes determined to avoid the creeping decrepitude once considered an inevitable part of one's forties, fifties and the years beyond. Initially, I was cheered by 40-year-old swimming sensation Janet Evans qualifying for the Olympic trials in both the 800-meter and 400-meter freestyle events nearly a quarter-century after her heroics in the 1988 games in Seoul. But Evans' defiance of the supposed limitations of age was followed by other news dispatches that suggest the rest of us can emulate her example.

Case in point: University of New Hampshire researchers' surprising discovery that regular runners in their sixties can match the efficiency -- that is, economy at utilizing oxygen to maintain a given running pace -- of athletes 30 or more years younger, even though they take in less oxygen. The study also found that older runners tended to have weaker muscles and less flexibility, which explained why it seemed harder for them to run as fast as their younger counterparts. But UNH associate professor Timothy Quinn, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, explains that those problems can be improved with more time in the weight room and on the yoga mat. "It doesn't take a lot to maintain strength," he says. "We need to set up programs that enhance strength....they'll be better runners for it."