To hear US President George W. Bush tell it, the long jobs drought is over. Economists, too, have shifted their focus from unemployment to inflation, convinced America's jobless recovery is ending.
But try telling that to Leonard Bedford, laid off last week after nearly nine years as a maintenance technician at AT&T in Conyers, Georgia. The 34-year-old father of two survived years of rolling lay-offs at the telecommunications giant, only to see his job cut just as analysts hail an economic revival.
"They say the economy is doing well, but who's it doing well for? If I had a billion dollars and now I have a billion and a half dollars, oh yeah, it's doing well for me. But for that working American that makes $40,000 a year taking care of his family and being told he's being laid off, it isn't doing so well for him," Mr Bedford said.
"Things are not getting better." Republicans, bond traders and many economists took March's surprise 308,000 job gain and ran with it, declaring an end to the much-lamented jobs drought that has hobbled the US economy since the 2001 recession.
"The economy is strong, and it's getting better," election-bound Mr Bush declared this week on a two-day bus tour to Michigan and Ohio, adding: "The job picture is improving... Tax relief has made a difference to the economy."
April's report showed another 173,000 jobs were created last month, notching the eighth consecutive month of growth.
But the hiring gains are cold comfort to the 8.4 million unemployed Americans, for whom the celebration is nothing if not premature.
From the time Mr Bush took office in January, 2001, through March, 2.4 million Americans joined the jobless ranks and 1.8 million jobs disappeared. The unemployment rate - which had dipped to a three-decade low of 3.8 per cent in 2000 - steadied around 5.7 per cent, down from a 6.3 per cent peak last year.
Many factors have been blamed, from the movement of jobs to low-wage countries to higher productivity and the death of outmoded industries, particularly in manufacturing.
While jobs are returning, economists say about 150,000 are needed every month just to keep up with labour force growth.
Bank One economist Diane Swonk said the unemployment rate will drop to about 5.3 per cent this year, with 150,000 to 300,000 jobs created monthly. But she expects it to take until 2006 or 2007 before the jobless rate declines to the four per cent range of the boom years.
"We've got a long way to go to catch up on earlier losses. The good news is we are catching up, the trend is in the right direction," she said.
Still, for Americans like Harry Katopodis, laid off in December after 18 years with Northwest Airlines in Detroit, the only jobs that seem to be coming back are the low-wage ones. He was making more than $20 an hour when laid off from the ticket office, and scoffs at the suggestion real jobs are out there.
"It's not picking up at our level. The jobs that they're talking about have to be lower-paying jobs because I search for jobs all the time and there's nothing - not even a chance to go compete for a better-paying job," said Mr Katopodis, a 50-year-old father of three.
On the outskirts of Atlanta, Bedford thinks he will probably have to leave high-tech work behind, perhaps starting his own barbecue lunch business.
"Most of those (new) jobs are at the mall, dealing with retail or sales. But when you start looking at some of the technical jobs, those jobs aren't growing. Those are the jobs they're sending overseas," he said.
What's more, many economists believe it may soon become even harder to find work as thousands of young workers return to the hunt after years on the sidelines waiting for the market to improve.
"I think there are a lot of hidden unemployed out there - they're called college grads," said James Glassman, senior US economist at J.P. Morgan Chase.
"They've disappeared because they grew discouraged or went back to school. As the job market improves, we're going to see people coming back in and we may not see the unemployment rate come down much," Mr Glassman said.
For Mr Katopodis, that means competing with his teenage son and daughter for employment this summer, even as he heads back to school for retraining as a teacher.
"It's conceivable that I'll be in college at the same time as my kids... accumulating student loan debts that I'm going to have to pay off while helping pay for my children's college," Mr Katopodis said.