Ellis Henican hit the nail on the head. A "jobless recovery" makes about as much sense as a foodless meal.

Being one of the millions of Americans who have experienced the joys of unemployment in the new millennium, when I hear about economic indicators "looking up" while jobs continue to vaporize I want to break something.

So the good news today? This quarter's GDP numbers indicate a big jump in economic growth. The bad news? The net loss of an additional 41,000 jobs, bringing the total to 2.6 million since President Bush took office.

Awesome.

Kos points out economist Brad DeLong's interesting analysis of the latest data:

How can such strong output growth coexist with such lousy employment news? It is this year's great economic data mystery. Everyone believes that it cannot last. Either (i) firms will find themselves unable to meet rapidly-growing demand with their current labor force, and will start hiring at a furious pace, rapidly expanding employment; or (ii) households will take a look at their less-than-certain employment prospects, cut back on spending, and the pace of demand growth will slow drastically.

Current forecasts are smack in the middle: predictions of output growth at an annual rate of between 3.5% and 4.0% per year over the next year and a half or so, coupled with employment growth of perhaps 125,000 a month on average--enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising, but not enough to make unemployment fall.

However, the longer the disjunction between fast output growth and stagnant employment continues, the less likely this smack-in-the-middle forecast becomes. Things are very likely to be either significantly better or significantly worse than the current consensus forecast--but we have no idea which.

As a side note, I really do think this analysis is insightful, but read that last sentence a few times. Taken by itself, doesn't it give you the impression that Economics is a racket?