Funny thing about the unemployment rate. They say its at a 5 year low, 7.4% since dec. 2008. However, there's LESS people working. The "participation rate" is a gauge of how many people of the population working age are active. In 12-08 it was 65.8. Today it stands at 63.4

Basically, the pool of counted, working people has shrunk and the ratios change because our recession/depression hasn't ended. There's also 12,000,000 more people since 2008.

Most of these new jobs are part time, service oriented, like waiters, bartenders, fast food.

So people as why is the stock market at all time highs if things in the economy aren't good?

Money printing aka Quantum easing (QE) [the process is more "complex" but in simple terms it is printing money]. $85 billion is "printed" by the fed each month and finds its way into the stock and commodity markets. No matter how bad the news, earnings or economy, the market will rise because there is money and the only place it can go is the market. In fact when the news and data is bad, there is hope more money will be "printed" fueling excitement for stocks.

So how are big companies doing?

Very well. Record profit margins, record amount of cash on hand. The recession gave reason to cut jobs, lean down, outsource, pay people less and demand more from current employees. They pay very little in corporate taxes using loopholes too.

Will they start hiring because they have lots of money?

No. They see how well they've done, they'll horde cash (avoid taxes). And since all the economic data is BAD they have no incentive to take on additional risk like hiring new workers or expanding unless its a very sure thing.