Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the recession may be over. Do you feel the joy?</p><p>Me, neither, not with the national unemployment rate at 9.7 percent. And here&rsquo;s another indicator that we aren&rsquo;t there yet:</p><p>Driving back from St. Louis last weekend, my wife and I counted 61 billboards along Interstate 70 that were blank or had no paid ads on them.</p><p>Which tells me that we have a ways to go before happy days are here again.</p><p>However, one ad outside Odessa, Mo., was encouraging.</p><p>&ldquo;Hays has jobs,&rdquo; it read.</p><p>Yes, as it turns out, halfway between KC and Denver, Hays, Kan., has jobs to fill, even if that city of 20,000 and the rest of Ellis County no longer suffer from the labor shortage that led to the billboard campaign.</p><p>At 4.1 percent &mdash; full employment by some definitions &mdash; Hays&rsquo; August jobless rate was less than half of metro KC&rsquo;s.</p><p>And last fall, when the rate was 2.8 percent, there weren&rsquo;t enough workers to run factories and fill desk chairs, said Mike Michaelis, executive director of the Ellis County Coalition for Economic Development.</p><p>&ldquo;Back then, when we had about 400 people listed as unemployed,&rdquo; Michaelis said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d tell people, &lsquo;You know who they are and why they&rsquo;re not employed for one reason or another.&rsquo;&ensp;&rdquo;</p><p> Business isn&rsquo;t booming the way it was, but if you want to earn a paycheck, there&rsquo;s a job for you in Hays even today.</p><p> Michaelis credits the city&rsquo;s diverse economy. Unlike the 1980s, when a single plant shutdown led to store closings down Main Street, no one employer or industry dominates.</p><p> City leaders saw to that with an aggressive business recruitment campaign that added 2,000 jobs between 1996 and 2006.</p><p> You might say the effort was too successful. By the middle of this decade, Hays, like many other cities its size, was experiencing labor shortages.</p><p> Civic and business leaders responded with the Hays Has Jobs campaign, which has since been copied by other communities, and is aimed at attracting new workers and keeping the young folks who are aching to leave for the big city.</p><p> &ldquo;Do you know someone who would like to move back to the Hays area, but needs a job before they relocate?&rdquo; asks the hayshasjobs.com Web site.</p><p>The Kansas Department of Commerce is behind a similar effort to attract workers.</p><p>The irony is that it&rsquo;s almost tougher in this economy than when times were good. Someone in Detroit might be happy to take a job in western Kansas, but can&rsquo;t because he can&rsquo;t sell his house in a down market.</p><p>&ldquo;The concern we have is that, when the economy turns around, we&rsquo;re going to be in the same boat we were,&rdquo; Michaelis says.</p><p>Though that&rsquo;s not a bad boat to be in, considering.