It should not surprise anyone who has found themselves observing our economy on idle for the last few years wondering if we are in a Recovery Or A Recession. Lets call it a “recussion,” an economy that either can’t quite make up its mind what it wants to do or a puppeteer that is getting the strings tangled up. Either way, it is confusing and a bit scary.

Wilbur Ross, chairman & CEO of WL Ross & Co. LLC, observed “I think the economy is going to continue to lumber ahead,” he said in an interview. “There’s not real lift. There’s not real top-line growth and top-line growth is what makes jobs.” The top line, which is a company’s gross sales or revenues, indicates how effective a company is at generating sales whereas the bottom line is its net income and indicates how efficient a company is with its expenditures and operating costs and how effectively it has been at keeping down costs.

In a CNN article form April 2012 titled “To most Americans, it doesn’t feel like an economic recovery,” it reads, Friday’s weak jobs report is more than a disappointing blip. It is a glimpse ahead of our disappointing future. Nearly three years from the beginning of the economic recovery in the summer of 2009, the U.S. economy has replaced not even half the jobs lost in the slump of 2007-2009. At the current pace of job creation, it will take until 2017 to replace all the jobs lost.”

Now, according to data issued by the U.S. Labor Department, seasonally adjusted jobs amounted to 88,000. We have to go back to June of last year for an equally disappointing jobs number. Add to that the fact that nearly half-a-million people stopped looking for work last month and it is indeed depressing.

It seems the economy takes two steps forward and one step back, followed by one step forward and two steps back. This leaves most of us scratching our head and wondering if is this a recovery or a recession.