Fortunately, Aparna Mathur of AEI did an able job:

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was 6.1 million in March. Their share of the total unemployed increased from 43.9 to 45.5 percent, suggesting that more and more people are facing longer layoffs and unemployment spells, with the likelihood of finding a job diminishing over time. The number of discouraged workers, at 921,000, has changed little from over a year ago. These are workers who have simply stopped looking for work since they do not believe that there are any opportunities to find work in the market. These people are not included in the official unemployment statistics.
Clearly, much more sustained growth in employment is needed before we start cheering. By some estimates, we need at least 200,000 additions per month over a reasonably long period for the job market to return to normal.

David Leonhardt of the NYT added another cautionary note:

The workweek didn’t get any longer; it typically does get longer before a big boom in hiring. And an employment increase of 216,000 is not exactly blistering. At that pace, the unemployment rate would not return to 5 percent for about five more years.

AEI’s John Makin offers an even darker picture in his latest Economic Outlook. In light of a number of major exogenous shocks, from the Arab Spring to the tsunami to rising energy prices, Makin offers thoughts on the economic impact of the resulting climate of uncertainty:

Given that the immediate impact of elevated uncertainty is to reduce aggregate demand, slow hiring, and increase the demand for cash and hoarding vehicles, which in turn further depresses aggregate demand, growth can slow abruptly as producers face a sharp rise in unsold inventories. They then cut production and may lay off workers. Capital spending drops sharply. When the elevated uncertainty is driven by exogenous shocks that increase the price of major energy inputs such as oil and coal, the problems for the economy, financial markets, and–by implication–policymakers who are expected to fix everything, are compounded.

Uncertainty raises the risks of hoarding of energy resources as a hedge, which will lead to even higher prices. It leaves central bankers in the dark, which makes it more likely that they will overreact or underreact. The list goes on. And if the economy does slow down, as seems increasingly likely, there’s not many policy bullets left in the chamber:

If the global recovery stalls again at midyear in 2011 as it did in 2010, the prospects for US revival from the likes of QE2 and stimulus 2–and of global revival under a smooth transition to a stable inflation path in China, Europe, and most emerging markets–are not good. The Fed and to a greater extent the other central banks, save the newly beleaguered Bank of Japan, are set to remove monetary accommodation. The upward pressure on energy prices exacerbated by the shocks of the past few weeks will likely keep them on that path. Budgetary pressures on governments elsewhere and the political consensus to tighten fiscal policy mean that fiscal -stimulus will be steadily removed.
Policy steroids are being withdrawn on the assumption that the global economy, although burdened with extra uncertainty and higher energy costs, is on a self-sustaining path to recovery. If the uncertainty goes away quickly enough and elevated equity markets hold up, a benign global scenario may yet emerge. Alternatively, if a global- growth scare reemerges in 2011, those who bet on a policy fix akin to that of 2010 will be disappointed. It is all very uncertain, and that reality, by itself, makes a growth pause more likely.

Makin has called for short-term fiscal stimulus in the past, and one gets the sense that he wouldn’t be averse to yet another round. I am more skeptical about the virtues of short-term fiscal stimulus, but Makin is always worth reading.

P.S. I should note that Makin doesn’t believe that the time is right for more short-term fiscal stimulus at this stage. Rather, he believes, as do I, that we need to pursue growth-enhancing structural reform.