Have you heard the news? The Great Recession is over! Yep, the media are simply awash in glad tidings, from the first quarter's nationwide employment growth of 162,000, to the sudden burst in home sales in many metropolitan areas, to the Dow topping 11,000! Woo-hoo! Happy days are here again!

Well, except that unemployment is still hovering at 9.7 percent, the housing sales heat will likely cool off after the federal tax credit expires and layoffs in the financial services industry, including the insurance sector, are well above the norm.

Insurance companies slashed 9,200 jobs in March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The news was especially rough for agents and brokers, the largest category, where employment slipped 3.1 percent to 633,200. I may be a math moron (blame it on the switch from arithmetic to "new math" when I was a kid), but these ugly numbers don't look like much of a recovery to me.