If Barack Obama had been told last November that the economy would have moved out of recession by July – as Thursday’s gross domestic product numbers indicated – he might have broken out the champagne. However, the White House was more funereal than celebratory in keeping with the opinion of most voters.

For most Americans, the return to growth is a pure abstraction. Next week’s jobless numbers, which is likely to see another 200,000 joining the unemployed, will be the more accurate reflection of the public’s mood, which alternates between angry and sullen. Jobs growth always lags behind economic growth and forecasters project unemployment will climb from its current 9.8 per cent to 10.3 per cent by early 2010.