First, there’s just the psychological effect of 10% unemployment. The media had been positioning that as the dreaded magic number and now it appears that we’ll never reach it.
Second, economists projected 325,000 job losses for July, so coming in 80,000 below is incredibly encouraging.
Third, we lost 545,000 jobs in April, 532,000 in May, 443,000 in June, and now 247,000 in July. Obviously we’re headed in the right direction.
So the negatives keep creeping down and things aren't nearly as bad as everyone thought they'd be. Still, the effects of this are going to be with us for a while yet. People who lose their jobs during periods of high unemployment tend to take jobs that pay less than the jobs they lost, so consumer spending will likely stay down even after employment numbers become healthy.
On the bright side, the economy seems to be swinging around. Whether that holds only time will tell. One thing's for sure, we can count on Republicans not to extend the same patience to Obama that they did to Bush, who didn't add net jobs until into his second term. Keep that in mind the next time some wingnut tells you that Obama has failed on the economy. They gave Bush eight times as many months to fix things than Obama has had now.
They hate historical fact, it's like crosses to vampires for them.
