Given the growth of the population and labor force and improvements in productivity, we need to be adding somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 jobs per month to nudge unemployment down.

As this recovery gets under way, professional services have begun adding jobs fairly broadly.

These top line numbers suggest we are into what's beginning to look like a jobless recovery. We simply can't drive unemployment down if we're only adding 30 or 40,000 jobs. So, basically, we're looking at a situation where the recovery is calling, but the labor market isn't really picking up the phone.

I'm definitely ready to believe that the rate of job loss has slowed and that soon we will be adding jobs. The question is, will we be adding enough to keep unemployment from rising?