When was the last time you heard two good economic stories in the tech sector in one week? Mark your calendars, because this week, it happened.

First, the mobile phone market turned a corner in the third quarter, with global shipments by manufacturers increasing by 5.6% over the previous quarter, the market research firm IDC reported.

According to the report, 287.1 million cell phones and smartphones were shipped in the third quarter. While those numbers were down 6% from the 305.4 million shipped in the third quarter of 2008, the quarter to quarter improvement is a good sign of renewed life in the tech sector.

The other good tech finance news: The pace of IT job loss has slowed to a crawl this fall — good news that couldn’t come soon enough for the sector, which has lost a quarter of a million jobs in the past year.

It seems that only 1,100 jobs were lost in September, or a .03% decline, according to the TechServe Alliance, an Alexandria, VA-based industry group that keeps an eye on U.S.  IT occupation data. That’s a much slower pace that previous months and could signal a stabilizing of the job market for tech talent.

Tags: Economy, IT employment, market, mobile phone, sector, upswing