The road to recovery for the economy looks a bit like zig-zag hill in Dorset with lots of twists, turns, unexpected diversions, two-speed recoveries, and slow-moving European juggernauts holding everyone up.
One thing is clear, however, it is going to be a long haul, and successful economies and companies will need long-terms strategies and forward planning that will help them navigate the current buffeting uncertainties.
Recessions never produce smooth maps of success and failure, and the contours are always irregular. In the midst of a million unemployed young people, many businesses are still reporting that they cannot find the right talent.
Take for example, Moog UK, a company that makes miniature microvalves for Formula 1 cars and all types of cool flight controls for aircraft.
The company is struggling to fill production and manufacturing engineers for their Tewkesbury factor and Steve Darnell, Moog's Regional Business Manager, feels that the problem lies in the talent pipeline. 'We need to change the way young people think about engineering,' he told the BBC.
Moog is doing something about it, and alongside others in their Local Enterprise Partnership are twinning with schools to invite pupils into the factory so they can see engineering in action. The Talent 2030 campaign we launched with senior business leaders and Vice Chancellors a few weeks back, believes that such approaches to educational activism by business is vital to the long-run recovery. Only by making, servicing and selling more things can the economy drive forward. And without the right talent pipeline this simply will not happen.
It is crucial, however, that girls become a clearly-focussed target of such twinning relationships. This will require a major shift in perspective by the teachers and parents of these girls as much as by the girls themselves. Engineering and manufacturing are still too associated in many teachers' and parents' minds with smokestacks, industrial rape and pillage and dark Satanic mills. Engineers may have built the machinery in those mills, but they are the only people who can green them and create the conditions for sustainable growth for the next industrial revolution.
Although it almost pains me to say it, you may save your soul by reading Blake, but you won't save the planet. Engaging young talent with the UK's industrial future is a profound challenge for all of us.