WizardPC’s comment to this post at Knoxnews:
I just did a quick google search for stories on the April 2008 jobs report, and it was called “bleak” because we only gained 18,000 jobs that month and unemployment was at 5%.
The April 2009 jobs report is “better than expected” at only 539,000 jobs lost and unemployment at 8.9%.
It’s all about expectations, and they’ve clearly been lowered over the last year.