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There are some stirrings to suggest that unemployment, after a prolonged period of being up in the stratosphere, may be heading back down to Earth. A new report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as noted in RCR Wireless News (News - Alert), suggests that there's one sector where unemployment has all but bottomed out: the telecommunications sector.

Telecom unemployment hit 1.7 percent in March 2015, the lowest it's been in months. The high water mark for 2015 was 3.1 percent unemployment in January, down from 6.1 percent in December. From there, it went to 1.9 percent in February, to reach an incredible low in March.

What's more, overall employment in the sector appears to be up. In December, the sector employed 861,500 workers, based on BLS numbers. January saw that number actually drop a bit to 861,200, but climb to 862,000 in February. Now in March, the number is at 863,400, showing that not only is unemployment down, but employers are hiring.

The telecom sector, by the BLS' figures, is a fairly broad one. The BLS notes that telecom includes those who work in telephony, in voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) operations, in telecom reselling, Internet access and even cable and satellite television distribution.  All of these firms fit into the overall thrust of the market, described by BLS as “...primarily engaged in operating and / or providing access to facilities for the transmission of voice, data, text, sound and video.”

One market that's seen some serious growth lately is the small cell market. Though reports suggest that this may not be the case much longer thanks to growth in competing technologies like Wi-Fi and outdoor distributed antenna systems (oDAS), growth in the field through 2017 is still expected before beginning to slow. But getting a position in this market depends on the understanding and use of several critical skills, ranging from radio frequency to cabling to network testing and even certification.

While the numbers don't quite seem to add up—how did the total number of employment in the telecom sector drop 300 workers between December 2014 and January 2015, while the unemployment percentage was cut almost in half in that same time frame?— it would seem that things are looking up overall. However, there's also a clear downside, as none of these numbers approach the high-water mark reached back in January 2005 when there were 1,088,000 employed in the telecom sector.

Still, it's worth pointing out that there is good news, and recovery may well be in the cards. Two straight months of growth is nothing to sneer at, and should give hope to those out there still on the hunt for that dream job in the telecom sector. Only time will tell if the growth can hold out, but there may be some happy days ahead.