After several months of growth, U.S. hiring shifted into a relative holding pattern in March. The unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged at 8.2 percent as private employers added 121,000 new jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly jobs report released today.

The numbers disappointed economists and other analysts who had expected to see a bigger increase based on recent hiring trends. That didn't happen. In March, the number of people who weren't working but wanted to also held steady, at 12.7 million. The long-term unemployed -- people who've been without jobs for 27 weeks or more -- remained even at 5.3 million.

Long before anyone talked about gap years, John Steinbeck left his desk, hopped in a car with his French poodle and set out to see what he could see. The result was Travels With Charley: In Search of America, first published 50 years ago and still an evocative account of a Nobel Prize-winning author and his time adrift.

Some books inspire you to hit the road; others tell you exactly how to do it. Here's a collection of books that may shape your thinking about your own gap-year adventures.

In the 1830s, the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville concluded that Americans were more free than other cultures to pursue the future and its possibilities because they weren't constrained by the past. "The tie which unites one generation to another is relaxed or broken," he wrote. "Every man there loses all trace of the ideas of his forefathers, or takes no care about them."

That's why de Tocqueville, if he could step into a miraculous time machine and be transported to the present, might be dumbfounded by what happened Monday, when the National Archives posted a digitized version of the 1940 U.S. Census on the internet.

America's aging population is changing the face of the country's work force, and the demographic shift is creating opportunities for mid-career job hunters and career changers.

Between 2010 and 2020, people 55 and older are projected to be the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. labor force, according to the 2012-13 Occupational Outlook Handbook, a jobs forecast released March 29 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, healthcare professions are among of the nation's fastest-growing occupations.

Tax Day is fast approaching, but it's not quite as close as you might think. This year you have until Tuesday, April 17, to file your 2011 federal and state income tax returns. The two-day extension from the usual deadline comes because April 15 falls on a Sunday, and the following day is Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C., which, under federal law, is treated like a federal holiday.

While you're contemplating how to spend your two extra days, here are some things to note for your 2011 tax return:

I've always thought of salad as so much more than a lowly side dish. As the warmer months roll in, I get more adventurous with my salad creations -- adding whole grains here, roasted veggies there. When friends come for dinner, they often request my famous "Garbage Salad." Though it may not sound appetizing, it's actually a delicious collection of mixed greens, tomatoes, avocado, cucumber, cheese (usually feta), whatever type of bean I have in the house (typically garbanzo or cannellini), a seed or a nut (like sunflower seeds) with a simple oil and vinegar dressing.

By combining a few basic ingredients that you likely already have on hand, you can create a delicious, healthy, satisfying meal in minutes. Need some inspiration? Here are five fun salad recipes I've uncovered from around the web. Enjoy.

1. Mixed Roasted Vegs and Rocket Giant Couscous

This week's news was dominated by the U.S. Supreme Court's hearings on a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the cornerstone of the Obama administration's health-care reform law. Much of the debate focused on the law's most controversial provision -- the individual mandate, which requires Americans to buy health insurance.

But a bigger question is whether the court will go on to overturn the entirety of Obamacare, as both opponents and supporters of health-care reform call the law. As Forbes.com reports, much of day three of the hearings delved into whether the individual mandate could be severed from the law, or whether eliminating the provision would necessitate junking the entire program. While liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that a "salvage job" would be more prudent, the court's conservative stalwarts, Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia, seemed to focus on whether Congress would have passed health-care reform in the first place without the mandate.

Conflict is the rocket fuel of good fiction. Writers go anywhere to find it -- into imaginary barrooms and board rooms, their characters' bedrooms, even backward or forward in time. One of my favorite novels, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, draws much of its power from the most devastating conflict in human history, World War II, using the aftermath of the war as a backdrop for personal struggle.

Ondaatje is not alone. Authors are still exploiting the drama of World War II, a war that, for baby boomers, remains particularly compelling. It is the dark period that preceded us -- the cataclysm that drew our mothers to munitions factories and our fathers to Normandy and Iwo Jima. Such a broad, far-reaching nightmare offers so many story lines and tangents that writers may never exhaust them.

This week, in a rare three-day hearing, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a challenge to a key provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [pdf], the law passed by Congress in 2010 that is the cornerstone of the Obama Administration's efforts to reform health care in America.

The administration and the law's supporters see health-care reform as necessary to make health care more affordable and accessible to Americans, millions of whom long went without coverage. Some opponents, however, see the program as government intrusion on the health-care industry and on patients' choices, while others charge that it will drive up costs rather than control them, and will add to the federal deficit. Some opponents have tried to get the federal courts to overturn the law. The Supreme Court agreed to consider a lawsuit filed by the state of Florida [pdf] that challenges one of the law's key provisions -- the "individual mandate," which requires that Americans not covered by an employer-provided plan obtain their own insurance. From Washington Post economics reporter Ezra Klein, here's an explanation of how the individual mandate would work when -- or perhaps if -- it takes effect in 2015.

With the economy improving, you might be considering a career change. Maybe you'd like to quit your present profession and do something completely different, even start a business. You could be primed for a change but unsure what change to make.

Whatever the motivation, here are some helpful books to guide you. Some are practical, offering step-by-step basics, while others serve as motivation to just get out there and do it.

Pick one or more from the following list that best suit your situation: