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Q) Why did God create economists? A) To make weather forecasters look good.
Economists, their inability to ever agree on anything, and the frequency with which their crystal ball gazing misses the mark is the butt of many jokes.
But with the volatilty the global and domestic economy is continuing to experience, you have to concede that predicting anything is an unenviable job.
Economists' predictions were wide of the mark on the unemployment reading both this quarter and the last, but that doesn't mean their disparate opinions can't be of some help in working out what the best and worst scenarios might be.
Yesterday saw a surprisingly large jump in the unemployment rate from 6% to 6.8%.
I say surprisingly large jump, not just 'surprising jump', because a slight technical correction was expected after the previous quarter's jawdropping fall from 7.1% to 6%.
So as a result, do the cheerleaders of the economic recovery need to 'do a bit of soul searching' as Berl's Ganesh Nana puts it, or is this simply what is to be expected from a 'scratchy, grumpy, recovery' , as ANZ National Bank's chief economist, Cameron Bagrie asserts?
Bagrie believes while the headline number is weak, some of that is the expected technical correction from last quarter's massive decline and within the numbers there are some glimmers of hope.
For example, the number of hours worked was up in both the March quarter and the June quarter. And it's fair to assume you don't work staff harder if there's not demand out there.
However, he concedes that it puts the Reserve Bank governor in a bit of a pickle.
Alan Bollard twice emphasised in his last statement that rates are still just 50-basis points above the emergency, expansionary levels he instituted to combat the worst of the global financial crisis, and that they remain supportive of the economy.
But even so, high unemployment, falling dairy prices, a weak housing and retail market and falling immigration numbers don't seem to support further hikes.
Nana says the numbers confirm that the arrival of the recovery was simply heralded too soon, and the Reserve Bank governor starting hiking rates prematurely, too. He says interest rate rises should be off the agenda for the rest of the year.
For their part, BNZ thinks it would "dead wrong" to conclude that the unemployment surprise indicates the economic recovery is stalling and while the data "muddys the OCR path" in the eyes of the market, the Reserve Bank should continue to inch the rate up.
They say the central bank has only made matters worse "and a rod for its own back with its seemingly softer rhetoric" in the wording of its last statement, where it indicated that while further hikes are coming, "the pace and extent of further OCR increases is likely to be more moderate than projected".
So what can we make of all of that? It's likely we're back into the will-he-won't-he debate ahead of next month's review of interest rates. Market pricing is still for a hike in September, but it's now down to a 65% chance.
That this economic recovery wouldn't mimic the traditional V-shaped bounce back seen after previous recessions was well documented.
But some must now be wondering whether it's even soggier than that.
