The only people that find the report less than hopeful are those who want Obama to fail. There is nothing but good news in those numbers.

*They are all "real" jobs (i.e. not holiday gift-wrappers or short-term Census takers).
*They are in every important sector - retail, manufacturing, etc. - so it's across the board.
*The number of government jobs shrank again, so these are all private sector jobs.
*The numbers also got revised upwards for November and December, meaning the gains made then were actually better than we thought.

The idea that in any way shape or form the economy was going to instantly jump back to pre-2007 levels overnight is so ridiculous and naive, it's absurd.

Damn if only we could keep all women home like in the 60s, unemployment rates would be fantastic.

The graph is ridiculous for the conversation we're having about the jobs report, by the way, because it's not about jobs and unemployment alone.  It just shows how many total Americans are employed.  As of 2010, nearly 37.5% of the population is under 18 or over 65.  And that percentage is growing monthly as the Baby Boomers started hitting 65 last year.  That number will NEVER be over 61% or so again in the next 20 years unless we have everyone working to age 75 or starting work at 12 like Newt wants them to.  

Total employment is useful for seeing how things like tax revenues and Social Security payments will change over the years, but it's disingenuous to use it when talking economic recovery and unempoyment rates.  

Right?  We got more people working by forcing people to have two jobs to keep up their lifestyles.  yay!  our percentage went up.  

Good point.

You might want to learn about something before you speak ...

The employment to population ration is the percentage of all working age people who are employed; which (in the United States and most developed nations) is the percentage of people between the ages of 15 an 65 who are employed. With the exception of a handful of people who retire early, retirement has absolutely no impact on the employment to population ratio.

employement went up because more than a million people left the work force because they couldnt find a job.

the CBO says unemployement is actually much closer to 10%.

and when you factor in all the people who stopped looking for jobs, and those that are severly under-employed the rate goes well northward of 15%.

really theres not much good news at all in these numbers, except for wishingful thinking and people who stick theri heads in the sand.

as for the bolded, i dont think anybody thought that. Over night. NO, but in 3+ years. YES. instead things have got worse.

Oh yes... she was one of the the more underrated threats of the Axis of Evil.

(waiting for Betty White comments to follow).

ah yes, but isn't it also true that unemployment going down means less people are getting fired?

Not really, no ...

The initial unemployment claims declining demonstrates that people are losing their job at a slower rate, but they're not at all that strong of a level:

Certainly, it is better than before but they (probably) have to get down below 350,000 per week for a very long time before you will (really) see the job market improve

Good news IF it will keep going down. (by keep going down I don't mean a non-stop down slope.)
Obama has done some good things and some bad but I wouldn't necessarily say this is Obama's doing. And wow was 2008 hyped up! The years before that look the worst! I thought that was when America had the most money...