After five months of positive readings, the Architecture Billings Index slipped back into negative territory during April, an indication that demand for design services declined.

The score for April was 48.4, compared with 50.4 in March. A score above 50 means billings increased. The index, compiled by the American Institute of Architects, is considered an early indicator of future construction, given that developers need designs before they build. AIA economist Kermit Baker said the volatility in the index isn’t surprising considering “the continued volatility in the overall economy.”

He also noted that weather patterns may have played a role in the latest reading. “Favorable conditions during the winter months may have accelerated design billings, producing a pause in projects that have moved ahead faster than expected,” he said.

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page C10 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Billings Slip BackProperty Pulse.

A growing number of states are encouraging kids to race through high school in three years. The reasoning: No more senior slump and lower taxpayer costs for schools. Sue Shellenbarger has details on Lunch Break. Photo: AP

With planning and foresight, Nicholas Myers of Fishers, Ind., finished high school in three years. He took required senior-year classes early and completed extra courses online. There were, of course, trade-offs: He passed up senior prom and missed a trip to New York City with the finance club.

Mr. Myers, 18, now completing his freshman year at Ball State University, says it was worth it.

“Nowadays we have CEOs in their 20s,” he says. “If I get out a year early, that’s a year extra of pay, and that’s a year earlier of retirement. That’s a whole year of my time that I can do whatever I want—make some money, invest some money or just relax.”

His hard work has already paid off: Mr. Myers was awarded $4,000 from the state of Indiana to be used at one of several dozen state-approved colleges or universities. In addition to Indiana, Minnesota, Utah, South Dakota and Idaho also give scholarships as an incentive to accelerate high school diplomas, often cutting public-school costs. Twenty-four other states explicitly allow early diplomas for students who earn required credits. Others are expanding ways students can earn college credit in high school, or high-school credit in middle school or junior high.

Some 2.9% of students who were sophomores in 2002 graduated from high school in three years or less, based on the latest available data; that is up from 1.5% in a previous survey in the early 1990s, says Elise Christopher, a research scientist who tracks high-school students for the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington. The scholarships are a relatively new experiment by states to motivate students to plan and complete courses efficiently. Growth in online classes and the use of proficiency testing to earn credit are speeding the trend.

Proponents argue that the programs cut states’ school spending and help families with college costs. They also eliminate “senioritis,” a time when some students slack off on learning, says Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst with Denver-based Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit policy research and analysis organization. The slump that sets in after college acceptance was the subject of a 2001 study by a government-funded commission, which recommended developing alternatives to the traditional senior year in the classroom.

That said, some education experts say there are downsides to three-year diplomas. Critics question whether students can be “emotionally or otherwise ready to enroll in college full-time at the age of 17,” Ms. Zinth says. “Many people think four years is necessary.” Also, early grads may have a more difficult time getting into competitive colleges, according to a study last year by researchers at Jobs for the Future, a Boston nonprofit group that promotes improvements in education and work force strategies; they may not have time to complete advanced-placement or college-level courses such colleges like to see.

Roland Priebe encouraged his son Luke to graduate early because regular middle- and high-school classes were a bad fit for his academically gifted son. “He was frustrated at the speed of learning. I didn’t want him to lose his love for school,” says Mr. Priebe, an editorial and graphic-design consultant in Chicago.

When he helped Luke arrange to skip prerequisites for some classes and enroll in dual-credit college courses, “he had a chance to learn at his own speed and he was re-energized.” Luke adds that by his third year of high school, he had run out of math and science classes to take. He wanted to move on to college to study applied math and computer science.

But to meet admissions standards for Ivy League schools, Luke had to take such a heavy load of courses, advanced-placement exams and extracurricular activities that he worked seven days a week for almost two years. He took eight AP exams in a single year, teaching himself much of the material. By graduation, “I was just exhausted. I needed a break,” says Luke, who is 18. Before entering Brown University in the fall, he will take a year off (with Brown’s approval) to work with his 22-year-old brother, Alexander, in a Web-development company they co-founded.

“In retrospect, what Luke did was crazy,” Mr. Priebe says. “Graduating in three years and building the extra credentials necessary to be appealing to Ivy League and other top colleges, including extracurricular and community-service activities, is just too much.” Students who aspire to an elite college would be better off staying four years, he says. (It is possible to enter college without a high school diploma or equivalent, but those instances are rare.)

Bryan Anselm for the Wall Street Journal

‘If I get out a year early, that’s a year extra of pay, and that’s a year earlier of retirement. That’s a whole year of my time that I can do whatever I want.’ —Nicholas Myers, Ball State student

Laura Paul was dying to graduate early for a different reason—to move on to a more diverse, cosmopolitan world than her Boise, Idaho, high school. Laura wanted to attend the University of Hawaii, where she was accepted after graduating from high school in three years. “I was so tempted to go,” Laura says. “I love the beach and the ocean, and I was so ready for a change.”

But her mother Joan said no. At 17, Ms. Paul says, Laura was “so young that I really wouldn’t be comfortable with her moving” so far away. Also, Idaho gives an average scholarship of $1,471 to early grads who attend an in-state college, and Ms. Paul wanted Laura to use it.

Laura says enrolling at nearby Boise State University has satisfied her needs so far. One of her first classes included students from Pakistan, the Middle East and Africa, a breast-cancer survivor in her 60s, and a man in his 50s who told stories from a career in retailing.

“Instead of high school, where everyone comes from the same neighborhoods and are the same ages and grew up the same way and think the same way, you get so many different perspectives and ways of learning,” Laura says. “I have never felt as natural in any school or learning environment as I have in college. It’s the best choice I ever made, to graduate early.”

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared April 11, 2012, on page D1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: High School, Only Shorter.

Por DARCY CROWE

MADRID (EFE Dow Jones)–Repsol YPF SA comenzó el martes una batalla legal contra la nacionalización por parte de Argentina de su filial en el país el mes pasado, en lo representa el primer paso de la petrolera española para lograr una indemnización mediante un arbitraje.

La petrolera dijo que ha comunicado a Argentina sobre una disputa bajo el Tratado de Promoción y Protección de Inversiones.

Esta comunicación es un primer paso necesario para dirimir la disputa en el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Diferencias Relativas a Inversiones del Banco Mundial.

Este centro de arbitraje resolverá la disputa si en un plazo de seis meses ambas partes no han alcanzado un acuerdo.

“Argentina ha violado diversas reglas del Tratado, comenzando por la obligación de no nacionalizar o expropiar las inversiones de Repsol”, dijo la petrolera en un comunicado.

Argentina anunció en abril la nacionalización de 51% de YPF SA propiedad de Repsol, que como consecuencia vio cómo su participación se redujo a 6,4%.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

After graduating in 2007 from Loyola Marymount University, Rachel Jones was laid off from two jobs consecutively in her chosen field, public relations. In the grueling nine-month job search that ensued, she sent her résumé to more than 130 employers, initially applying for just about any opening she could find—from office assistant to movie-production coordinator. She also sent the same generic cover letter to every employer.

“It’s easy to fall into a routine of just copying and pasting in a new company name,” the 24-year-old says.

It wasn’t until Ms. Jones started focusing on junior positions in her field and writing introductory notes tailored to specific opportunities she was aiming for that things started to turn around. She started receiving more interview invites for jobs she actually wanted. In August, she landed an account-coordinator position at a small Los Angeles public-relations firm.

For many out-of-work professionals, finding a job in today’s market requires far more effort than it did in the past—and a lot more stamina. Last month, the Labor Department reported that it takes unemployed workers an average of 27.2 weeks to land a job, up from 19.1 weeks in September 2008 and 16.7 in September 2007. But career experts say there are several ways job hunters can revive a stalled search.

Taking a highly targeted approach, as Ms. Jones eventually did, is one strategy. Another is to focus on obtaining leads to unadvertised positions where the companies seek out their own applicants. Relying solely on job-board listings, which have been shrinking, isn’t enough these days. There were roughly 3.3 million jobs advertised online last month, compared with 4.4 million in September 2008 and 4.7 million in September 2007, according to the Conference Board, a research firm.

Many employers have cut back on advertising jobs online because they are overwhelmed with applications, says Bradley G. Richardson, a partner at executive-search firm Kaye/Bassman International Corp. in Plano, Texas. Instead, they are relying on word of mouth and referrals to draw a more manageable number of applicants, he says. That requires more networking on the part of the job seeker—even tapping into people you don’t know well.

After getting laid off from a market-research firm in November, Jon Evoy says, he devoted most of his time to applying for positions he found online. “It’s easier to sit in front of your computer and just start looking for jobs as opposed to pounding the pavement,” he says.

But then a month passed during which Mr. Evoy, 30, says he failed to land a single interview. The lack of interest prompted him to shift gears. He reached out to everyone in his network—even people he hadn’t spoken to in years. One was an advertising professional he had met two years earlier at an industry event. Kaplan Thaler Group Ltd., the New York agency where she worked, wasn’t hiring at the time, but she agreed to set him up on an informational interview with a colleague who was a director at the firm.

Meanwhile, Mr. Evoy followed another bit of advice career counselors recommend to boost a lagging job search. He made a point of keeping up with news and trends in his target industry to identify potential job opportunities. When he came across an article in a trade magazine about how the firm he did the informational interview with had won a big client, he sent the director a congratulatory email and asked if the firm would be hiring soon to meet the new demands. He received a reply tipping him off to a coming job opening. He applied and got it. Later, Mr. Evoy learned that an employer he did a free-lance assignment for during his job search contacted the advertising firm and put in a good word for him—further proof of the power of networking.

A drawn-out job hunt also can give out-of-work professionals the time they need to fill a skills a gap—which in turn can jump-start a hunt. During her 10-month search last year, Laura Perry says she noticed many openings in her field, communications, required or preferred expertise in social media—something she lacked. “In my previous job, they had not embraced social media at all,” she says.

So Ms. Perry, 54, attended a conference on the subject and later volunteered to create a Facebook page for a local hair salon. She went on to build Facebook and LinkedIn pages for the Los Angeles chapter of the Executive Women’s Golf Association, of which she is a member. She also created a Twitter account for herself and tweets about the communications industry.

Ms. Perry added that social-media experience to her résumé and says what she learned helped her talk intelligently in interviews with employers—and she was able to point to samples of her work in this area. In July, she was hired as director of communications for the school of nursing at University of California, Los Angeles, where part of her job is to manage the school’s presence on Facebook and other social media Web sites.

In a recession, another way to put a job search back on track is to push your boundaries. That means including employers of all sizes and in more cities—even if that requires considering lower-paying positions at small, unknown firms.

Following a layoff from a midsize publishing company in February, Brian Rushton Phillips, 37, embarked on a search for a creative-director position in the Toronto area paying annual salary of $85,000 or more.

“I began lowering my expectations [for pay] once it became clear that the market wouldn’t accept it,” he says. In August, he accepted an offer for such a job but from a small publisher in New York that pays about $15,000 less than he earned in his last position. But he says he is happy to have a job, particularly one in the field he wants to work in.

If other changes aren’t helping refresh a job search, check for something as minor as a misspelled name or grammatical gaffe in your resume or cover letter. Job seekers should bear in mind that in a cutthroat market, employers are less inclined to ignore such errors, says Brad Karsh, president of JobBound, a career-coaching company in Chicago. It’s critical for job seekers to take the time to carefully proofread their resumes and every cover-letter submission, or have someone else do it. “The slightest mistake of any component of your job search can destroy your chances,” says Mr. Karsh. “This needs to be a flawless process.”

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com