Recovery has been a huge buzzword for economic news in the past month. While many experts have said it is too soon to make any hard and fast assumptions either way, others have described the current financial climate as the beginning stages of an end to the longest global recession since the end of World War II.

This week’s report on unemployment by the Labor Department gave some evidence that supports the theory of a budding recovery. The figures showed a drop in the rate of unemployment, from 9.5% in June to 9.4% in July. However, the picture of the job market in the U.S. is still relatively grim; 247,00o jobs lost during a time of economic prosperity would probably be viewed as catastrophic. Also included in the report was a revision to June’s job loss numbers, which spiked after a better-that-expected May. June’s job loss numbers were scaled back from 467,000 to 443,000.

The length of the work week also ticked up slightly in July, “a sign that businesses were not scaling back hours to cut their payroll costs” according to an article in the New York Times.

Quickly putting a sunny spin on the numbers, which declined largely because almost 400,000 people abandoned their search for work and exited the job market, the Obama administration has cited the figures as proof that the $787 billion stimulus package has begun to take effect. Furthermore, the prevailing sentiment of it could have been worse has been pushed further into the forefront. Although optimism has accompanied the new job numbers – as well as the stock indexes – experts still are forecasting an unemployment rate of over 10% before a noticeable change in new hires occurs.

The GDP might begin to see growth at the end of this quarter after an encouraging drop of only 1% over the last quarter. The Economist predicted today that “GDP will probably rise in the current quarter by as much as 3%.” Furthermore, “in July, manufacturers reported that new orders were growing briskly, the best in over two years, and car sales jumped by 15% to an annualised 11.2 million.” The Obama Administration will likely take some credit for that rise in sales due to the success of the Cash for Clunkers program (also known as CARS) which just received an extension of funding to the tune of $2 billion.

While the recession is certainly far from over, optimism has begun to take hold. Presumably, consumer confidence will follow, as long as new jobs are being created. Regardless of the speed of recovery, it is becoming clear that stimulus measures are beginning to show returns, putting the US economy ahead of the pack in the global race to regain growth in all sectors.