The next six to twelve months should reveal a lot about the U.S. labor market. Although the unemployment rate continues to hover near double-digits at 9.6 percent, some economists believe that strong productivity from U.S. workers over the past few years is one of the key factors that have kept employers from hiring.

The latest quarterly productivity figures, due out on Nov. 4, are expected to rise 1.7 percent for the third quarter after falling 1.8 percent in the second quarter.

According to the most recent unemployment figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people in the U.S. who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer remains stuck at 6.8 million or 46 percent of the total unemployed. No matter how you slice it, that's a staggering figure. In fact, it remains at the highest rate since the Department of Labor began tracking such figures in the 1940s.

Overall, the U.S. unemployment rate dropped in May from 9.9 percent to 9.7 percent. However, most of the 431,000 jobs added last month were the result of workers hired on a temporary basis by the federal government to help with the census. Some labor experts say the real unemployment rate is actually closer to 17 percent when you factor in people who are either under-employed or have simply given up looking for work.