The great economic question in the year ahead will center on job growth: Will there be any?
The answer will almost certainly be “yes,” but that invokes the inevitable follow-up: How much? In turn, that inspires the equally burning inquiry: “How soon?”
The latter two are the primary unknowns at the moment, and the stakes are high. Much of economic fate now depends on the outcome of job growth, or the lack thereof. We can be reasonably sure that 2010 will witness job creation, but there’s still an unusually high degree of uncertainty as to when this glorious moment will come, how quickly the upward momentum will kick in and how many jobs the trend produces in the business cycle ahead.