Today's column said:

The monthly jobs report may show that unemployment topped 10 percent last month for the first time since 1983. It'll probably disclose that U.S. payrolls shrank by another 300,000 jobs or so, bringing cumulative losses over the last two years to nearly 7 million jobs.

The results are out, and they weren't that bad. Unemployment fell slightly in July -- from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent. That was the first dip in 15 months. National employment dipped by 247,000 jobs, not the expected 300K or so. That was the "best" result since August 2008, just before the financial markets fell off a cliff. And more "good" news from AP:

Also heartening: job losses in May and June turned out to be less than previously reported. Employers sliced 303,000 positions in May, versus 322,000 previously logged. And, they cut 443,000 in June, compared with an earlier estimate of 467,000.

Heartening compared with the Great Depression, that is. Anytime the economy sheds 200,000 or 300,000 jobs is not a good month. But the lack of another surprise bad report -- like the one from June, should give hope that things are at least moving in the right direction and dampen "the stimulus is a failure" talk. Says T. Rowe Price economist Alan Levenson in a note to clients:

Unemployment rate still headed to 10%. The downtick in the unemployment rate (to 9.4%) was the first since April 2008, but does not signal an end to the upward trend... Indeed, the unemployment rate will rise further in the early stages of labor market recovery, during which employment gains fall short of labor force growth.

In other words, the jobless ranks will swell further, but that doesn't mean the economy isn't improving. Unemployment is a "lagging" indicator, which means it says more about where the economy has been than where it is going. None of this, however, changes the point of the column: We're in for a long, slow, "jobless" recovery, similar to those after the previous two recessions.