There was a time when David Lindbury didn't have much trouble moving from one job to another.

So when the engineer's six-month contract at Home Depot was winding down in late winter, he went to the usual spots on the Internet and did the usual things.

It didn't work.

"It was a little slow-going," he said. "I had a few interviews, but no offers."

He hired a "coach," retooled his resume and approach, and tried again. Three dozen resumes and a series of interviews later, he was hired as a document architect —- a senior technical writer —- for SunTrust.

Lindbury's experience is better than that of many workers, but it is emblematic of the downward shift in the labor market.

The nation shed about 20,000 jobs in April in the fourth consecutive month of losses, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

With gross domestic product still apparently growing, experts continue to debate whether the economy has slipped into recession. But whatever the definition, expectations have fallen so far that April's job loss was greeted as good news since it wasn't as bad as analysts had forecast.

The official jobless rate slipped slightly in April, from 5.1 percent to 5 percent. That mark is modest by historical standards, but it is calculated only after eliminating Americans who have stopped looking for work.

Count workers who are "marginally attached," or working part time for economic reasons, and the rate jumps to 9.2 percent. That is up from 8.2 percent a year ago when the basic rate was 4.5 percent.

For skilled workers, the effect has been a shrinking of the options, said Mike Cleland, president of MDI IT Workforce Solutions, a branch of Atlanta-based staffing company MDI. "We have seen a measurable drop-off in the number of jobs coming in for April and going into May." What has not slacked off is demand for skills that help with daily operations, he said: project management, quality assurance and business analysis.

Hit harder are those with less education and fewer skills, said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project.

Jobless figures do not show the whole picture, he said. "The people who are out of work are having a very difficult time. A lot of people who are employed are not in the kinds of jobs they want."

But it's a huge economy, and even in sluggish months, many people are being hired.

Nava, a Southwestern restaurant in Buckhead, is hiring servers. The upscale eatery is adding lunch on weekends, said Jennifer Boozer, spokeswoman for the Buckhead Life Restaurant Group.

With manufacturing bleeding millions of jobs in the past decade, services have become increasingly important. That category includes the waiters, as well as a wide range of other jobs.

At HOK Inc., most new hires are architects and interior designers.

In the past few months the company has added about a dozen people to the 80-plus who were already in its Atlanta office, said Dan Cash, senior vice president.

"We are very busy right now," Cash said.

One problem for job-seekers is the mismatch of old skills and a market demanding new ones —- such as those who surf the digital wave.

Most of the dozen people added during the past year at McCrae Communications in Atlanta boast "interactive" skills and experience in designing, developing and running Web sites, said Joe Snowden, company president.

Snowden is hiring, but he also fears an undertow.

"We are being careful as we see how the economy plays out," he said. "We are hiring to meet demand. In the past, I might have hired to meet expected demand."

Hiring in general has been steady but modest during the past five years —- which may help explain why job losses now are not worse: Companies that did not bulk up payrolls do not need to slash them.

Optimists say the downturn could be brief as well as shallow since the government will soon be sending taxpayers billions of dollars in rebates.

But the economy still faces fierce negative forces: nervousness in credit markets, the sag of housing sales and construction, the rise of consumer prices, the stagnation of wages, the surging cost of gasoline.

"The trend is clear: The economy has slowed," said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State. "It's still too early to say when this thing is going to be over."

LOSSES AND GAINS

The U.S. economy lost 20,000 jobs last month. Here are a few of the affected sectors:

Manufacturing..........down 46,000

Construction...........down 61,000

Retail.................down 26,800

Professional and

business services......up 39,000

Health care............up 36,900

Leisure and

hospitality............up 18,000

Public/Private

Government.............up 9,000

Private sector.........down 29,000

Sources: Center for Economic and Policy Research, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics