What would send markets for a loop? Disconcertingly, it is possibly the event which the world's populations, and its politicians, have been awaiting – a strong and early recovery in employment.

This joyous event would be a problem because it is currently deemed so unlikely. There is a deep split between “bears” who believe the weight of bad debts and the “deleveraging” – paying down debts – that it causes will drag the economy into another dip, and “bulls” who believe that government stimuli are jolting the corporate sector back to life.

But both tend to agree that unemployment will stay uncomfortably high for a long time. The bulls' case is for a “jobless recovery”. If companies start serious re-hiring, then the pressure would become extreme on central banks to exit from the current exceptionally low rates. Such a rise in employment would suggest that there really are inflationary pressures in the economy. Without a long drawn-out period of cheap money from the government, the bulls' case begins to fall apart.

Any situation in which wrong-footed central banks need to scramble to change policy brings with it risks of mistakes, both by bankers themselves, and by the investors attempting to interpret their actions. Then there is foreign exchange. Persistent joblessness is one of the assumptions behind the attack on the dollar. This boosts the earnings of US companies, as most of S&P 500 companies' sales are made outside the US. A recovery in employment would mess up that scenario and create the risk of accidents as investors re-position in a hurry. There are good reasons why most expect unemployment to stay high. Stock markets, nudging their highs for the year, show investors can deal with this. But the way that investors are almost relying on unemployment to stay high demonstrates that the recovery, in markets and the economy, remains on shaky foundations.