BOSTON-During the second quarter, according to Richards BarryJoyce & Partners' figures, Boston showed 39,000 square feet ofpositive absorption, which as SVP of Research Brendan Carroll tellsGlobeSt.com, is pretty negligible in a 177-million-square-footmarket. This past quarter amounted to 401,000 square feet, whichnot only shows a significant drop in vacancy, also links twoconsecutive quarters of positive absorption. "This is a potentiallyindicative trend to be entering of positive absorption of spacebeing taken, as opposed to companies shedding space," heexplains.

The beating that Boston and its outlying submarkets tookimmediately following the tech bust took some time for recovery,but when it arrived, the precursor was flat absorption that ledinto a rally of 20 consecutive quarters of positive growth. Carollpoints to the current trend as aping the this previous trend,although it is too soon to say for sure. However, "this isexactly how the last recovery began," he says.

The zeitgeist is all about jobs and Boston is not finding asurge in jobs, but Carroll says it's not time to worry just yet."Jobs actually followed the recovery," he explains. "The last timeit took about 12 months to increase the number of persons employedto translate to increased occupancy." It's also important to notethat the way unemployment is counted may be somewhatcounter-intuitive to confidence. Unemployment counts the amount ofpeople out of work who are still seeking employment, so the numbersdropped slightly as more long-term unemployed began not botheringto search for gainful employ. However, as more and more people seea positive movement in the economy, more will re-enter the poolcreating a surge in unemployment numbers as uncounted becomerecognized by statisticians.