Banks are hiring again. And in hotspots across the developing world factory wages are rising fast, suggesting a demand for labour that is well ahead of supply. But last week’s feeble US payroll figures were a market-shaking reminder that for much of the world the recession in jobs is proving more painful than the recession in output.

The US case is the clearest. The last time gross domestic product was at the current level, in 2007, the unemployment rate was less than half July’s 9.5 per cent. In the EU, previous high joblessness makes the comparison less dramatic but the unemployment rate is still 0.6 percentage points higher now than in 2003, when real GDP was similar.

The current employment malaise – which looks worse if disaffected non-workers and part-timers who would like to be full-time are taken into account – casts doubt on a basic assumption of labour market economists. It probably is not quite true that “the key driver of the unemployment rate is the change in the level of economic activity”, as a recent International Monetary Fund study put it. Growth is more likely one of several such drivers.