Tough luck if you're out of work. That seems to be the word on the Street. Many Wall Street economists are downright dour about the job market. This, they say, is shaping up to be a "jobless recovery." It's easy to connect the dismal dots. The stock market is in the pits. The economic rebound is tepid. Big companies are still handing out pink slips by the thousands. Management is obsessed with wringing greater efficiencies from their high-tech equipment rather than adding workers.

Shades of 1992, the last jobless recovery? The job market was bleak back then. Let's review the numbers to show what I mean. The unemployment rate was at 6.8 percent in March 1991, when the recession ended and the upturn began. The jobless rate climbed to a peak of 7.8 percent in June 1992. The unemployment rate did not drop below 6.8 percent until September 1993—nearly three years later.

But this time around, there are already modest signs that the job market is improving. Companies boosted their payrolls by 41,000 in May. Small businesses are putting up "help wanted" signs, and temps are heading back to work. Best of all, with productivity soaring, companies are earning more on the goods and services they produce—a harbinger of faster growth and lots of jobs. This recovery could well turn into a labor-short rebound with remarkable speed. Remember, it wasn't all that long ago that business complained bitterly about labor shortages. With the unemployment rate at 5.8 percent, it won't take much of an improvement in growth for business to ramp up its hiring plans.

Now, turning points in the economy are difficult to predict. The natural inclination of the forecasting community is to hedge on the cautious side. But a look at business cycle upturns over the past half-century reveals that the economy typically snaps back faster than the consensus expects. And the economy has considerable momentum coming out of the mildest recession in U.S. history.

To be sure, investors are gloomy. But investors are telling us more about their lack of trust in Corporate America than their collective judgment of the economy's prospects. They feel suckered by CEOs, with good reason. Take the latest revelations: The FBI arrested the ex-CEO of ImClone, the biotech company, on charges of insider trading. The former head of Tyco—who pocketed more than $300 million over the past three years—was indicted by the Manhattan D.A. for allegedly evading $1 million in New York taxes on art purchases.

Traditionally, the equity market soars first and the job market follows. This time around, the labor market could well lead the equity market higher. market could well lead the equity market higher.