The stock market keeps going up.  Its now about to hit 10,500 for the first time since early September 2008.  As we continue the V-shaped recovery, there is one thing thats missing: JOBS.  We’ve discussed how the only reason people still aren’t hiring is because they lack any faith in the future of the economy.  Today, the Gallup tracker of whether the public believes the economy is “getting better” hit a 4 and a half month low, reaching just 31 percent saying its getting better.  At the same time, the Dow Jones hit another 52 week high and just keeps on going with good fundamentals driving it on.  So where’s the disparity? It all started 3 months into the recovery in mid-June when the stock market had flattened for about a month.  (Below is a graph of the increase in the percent of people not saying the economy is poor [green] compared to the increase in the Dow Jones [brown]):

At that point most people thought that the jump in stock prices was over-inflated and manufactured.  Therefore, when another rally came to fruition in July, the consumer confidence levels remained unchanged as only investors new that this was further indication of positive movement in the economic scope.  As you can see, the highlighted area, beginning in late May when the Dow stagnated for about a month and a half, marks when the percentage of Americans not saying the economy is doing poorly (saying its doing excellent, good or fair) stopped moving.  Currently, it is lower than it was mid-May despite the fact that the Dow has gone from 8500 to 10500.  While at first shocking, the fact of the matter is that the consumer’s general disinterest in complex economic facts like house prices, home sales, retail sales etc… causes resistance to accepting the Dow as a perfect economic indicator.  In a way, it forms a negative feedback loop where the bad job numbers cause the people to lack faith in the economy, which in turn causes them not to hire.  Until this can somehow be broken, we are in for several more months of 10%+ unemployment levels, several more months of relatively poor consumer confidence levels, and several more months of poor approval ratings for Obama and his administration.