Predicting the timing of economic recovery is a tricky business. As Paul Venables, finance director of Hays, commented following the company’s latest trading statement: “It’s hard to predict when recovery will come. We are seeing no signs of recovery, and we wouldn’t expect to.”

Although, of course, that didn’t preclude him from giving an opinion. “The bottom is going to be at least a year,” he proffered.

Only last week the Chancellor Alistair Darling revised his prediction for when the much vaunted recovery will begin, from the second half of 2009 to sometime in 2010. Meanwhile, comments by Gordon Brown were interpreted as implying that the recession might last two years. About as clear as mud then.

For stock watchers in the recruitment sector, the timing of any economic upturn is an important question, because as Michael Vassallo argues opposite, in the current downturn all staffing companies have been tarred with the same brush.

UBS equity analyst Mark Shepperd commented: “Share prices have had a very bad 18 months. Perhaps a lot of the bad news has been discounted, so I am not sure they will fall a lot this year.”

Time to ring your broker then? Not according to Shepperd. “It’s too early to buy shares,” he advises. “Prices will not recover until we are into the upturn, which still looks a way off.”

The old investment adage that time in the market is more important than timing the market has never seemed more apt…