Hot on the heels of a retail sales report from the Commerce Department showing a third straight month of declining sales, the latest Retail Online Index from IBM shows that total online sales were down by more than 2% from the last quarter.

That’s one of the big findings for a new digital jobs report that’s just been released. For the second straight quarter demand for search engine optimization specialists, those crafty Google-juicing pros, is vanishing faster than a 404 link. Who’s winning the digital jobs battle? There’s a major shift, surprise, surprise to mobile developers with Apple specialists beating out Android.

The fast-moving impact of mobile on the digital economy is now so influential that old-school economists are looking at it as one of the few growth drivers in an otherwise rough macroeconomic climate. Last week, it was confirmed in Mary Meeker’s annual digital trends report that mobile is lifting online commerce and, soon to come, advertising as well. With that in mind, here are some more figures that drill down into the growth rate of mobile in Europe and the U.S.

Mary Meeker’s annual state of the digital world address, delivered earlier this week under the name the “2012 Internet Trends” report, is yet again a must-read for anyone trying to get their head around what to prioritize investment-wise going forward. There’s a lot here, but the big summary is: mobile is a driving force in consumer digital uptake. The only problem is: when will it pay off?

This is one of those questions that admittedly is being asked in just a handful of companies these days. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a pressing question for brands, publishers and organizations of all stripes who seek to reach a global audience on the device they prefer. A new forecast on tablet sales may just accelerate the conversation at the board level.

Promising to be more “accessible and available,” America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve Board, launched itself into the Twitter age on Wednesday with its first official Tweet (and then four more in subsequent hours). For those keeping score, it is playing catch-up to the Bank of England and The Reserve Bank of Australia in the “central banks that tweet” category, but it’s showing a much more savvy than these notoriously anti-social brands.

We started the week with a big Facebook #Fail from Coca-Cola Down Under and things didn’t get much better as we all tuned in for the big tech news of the week – the details of the new iPad. To recap, Coca-Cola Australia figured it would be a fun idea to ask its 736,000 Facebook fans to participate in a type of word-association game that quickly spiraled into a fan-on-fan insult-fest. It was yet another lesson (as if we needed reminding) that in social media, brands have little to no control over what fans will ultimately say.

It’s been less than 24 hours since Apple unveiled the new iPadHD iPad3 iPad and tech bloggers and journos are still picking it apart. It has super-fast LTE hookup for those 14 or so people on the planet signed up to a true 4G plan. It has a better camera, packs more pixels and has a faster processor for gaming and video-on-the-go. What’s it missing? For starters, a single share button or a helpful re-tweet.

The Obama Administration in Washington has passed a series of consumer protections for web consumers that looks eerily European: something closer to an opt-in regime that calls for greater transparency on how user data is used and a do-not-track-option.

PayPal UK launched an effort last week to boost its social media presence through a giveaway contest dangling free iPad 2′s. Its message: love us and we might award you with this must-have baby. Can boosting social followers through bribes be a genuine lure? More importantly, does it work?