A jobful recession?

Well, just what is the proper term for the polar opposite of a "jobless recovery"?  Because that's what seems to be happening in the UK.  The employment data for the three months ending in May, which were released today, are simply remarkable. The UK economy added 181,000 jobs in the period, which served to reduce the number of unemployed by 65,000.

As every media commentator has noted, these numbers seem completely at odds with the conventional belief that the UK economy is mired in a double-dip recession.  GDP is reported to have declined in both the final quarter of last year and the first quarter of the current year.  Since employment is generally regarded as a lagging indicator, it should now be declining, rather than rising steadily:  despite all the angst in the local media, the UK is currently creating more employment, adjusted for the size of the economy, than the United States.

So is it the GDP data that are wrong, or the employment data?  The accuracy of the ONS's estimates of GDP has been under fire for some time, and GDP is much harder to measure than employment or unemployment, so the best guess has to be that for whatever reason, the GDP data are understating activity in the economy.  When all the data are properly tallied and revised, a process that takes several years, the double dip recession may well be shown never to have happened.

Of course, the media have not quite been able to say anything as upbeat as that.  On the BBC news bulletins this morning, the line being taken was that against a background of gloomy survey data and falling inflation, the employment numbers could be seen as "a positive sign".  I've been racking my brains to try to think of a  background against which rising employment could be seen as a negative sign, but I haven't come up with anything.