The BLS just released the jobs report for June 2013 and it beat expectations and included significant upward revisions to prior months. The Establishment Survey showed a total increase of 195,000 jobs for June (+202,000 private payrolls) and an additional +70,000 added to the April and May reports (making them much better than initially reported). The unemployment rate (which comes from a different survey) stayed at 7.6%, which was a result of an increase in the labor force and slightly smaller job creation numbers in that survey. Overall, the report was very positive and with continued reports in a similar range, the unemployment rate will go down and the economy will see some accelerated growth (+200k/month jobs does not equate to a <2% GDP rate).
The Obama economy is really doing much better than most seem to want to give credit for. While we all long for the days of 80s/90s job creation, that may not be realistic with our aging population and increasing productivity gains. When measuring since 2000 though, Obama already owns the #1 and #3 years for private sector job creation and this year would put him on pace to have #1, #2, and #4.
Many people gravitate toward the negative side of all economic stories and suffer from a recency effect that keeps the economy of 2008/09 (which we are nowhere near) as the marker for the economy today. While not everything has gone as peachy as we would like, the reality is the economy is improving and may even be seeing some acceleration to that improvement. In other words, the economy isn't going back into recession and is not anywhere close to another 2008 collapse today.