>For several months now, economists of all stripes have been forecasting
>that payroll jobs?a notorious lagging indicator?would begin to rise
>smartly.
That's absolutely not true, though it's amazing how often people say it. In most post-WW II business cycles, employment bottomed within a month on either side of the trough. The first departure was the early 1990s, when there was an eleven-month lag between the NBER recession trough and the low in employment; this time, there was a sixteen-month lag.
Doug