Have you noticed a bounce in your brogues lately, a spring in your Jimmy Choos?

Maybe it's all that talk about how the Great Recession is receding -- or maybe actually over.

This summer, Newsweek declared it over (sort of). Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he's "pretty sure" the worst is behind us and the turnaround began in July.

If he was pretty sure, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers were dead certain economic growth would show up in the second half of 2009.

And by September, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said the recession was "very likely" over.

Break out the champagne?

Not yet. While the economy is improving more quickly that anyone thought possible just a few months ago, the labor market will continue to contract well into 2010. And that's what you probably care about the most.

With that in mind, here's a snapshot of where we are and where we're headed:

On the job...

We've lost 6.7 million jobs since December 2007, and forecasters predicted the unemployment rate would keep climbing. That's why it came as a pleasant surprise when the Department of Labor reported that July's rate held steady, dipping slightly to 9.4% from 9.5% in June. By August, the rate rose again slightly, to 9.7%

That's 14.9 million unemployed Americans, and the job drain isn't expected to stop until mid-2010. But the pace of losses is slowing.

Wages and salaries fell 4.7% in the 12 months ending in June 2009. It was the biggest drop since record-keeping began in 1960, the Commerce Department says. As long as businesses keep contracting, so will paychecks.

A national analysis projects that 1.5 million Americans will run out of unemployment checks by year's end.

But there's a move in Congress to pass a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits.

At home...

Pending sales of existing homes rose 3.2% in July after a 3.6% increase in June. It was the sixth straight monthly increase. New-home sales also rose -- by 9.6% from June to July, according to the Commerce Department. Analysts saw these as signs that real estate is coming out of its coma.

Buyers are drawn by lower prices and mortgage rates around 5.3%.

The median U.S. home sales price was $174,100 in the second quarter of 2009, down 15.6% from a year ago. But foreclosures -- there were a record 1.5 million in the first half of the year -- are up 15% from a year ago, and they will continue to slow any recovery.

President Obama's plan to fight foreclosures by modifying mortgages got off to a very slow start.

Intended to help as many as 2 million Americans, it reached only about 250,000 by summer. So the government brought lenders to Washington and extracted a new goal of helping 500,000 strapped homeowners by Nov. 1.

In the stores...

Cash for clunkers. Need we say more?

The wildly popular government rebate program to pay vehicle owners up to $4,500 to turn in outmoded rides for more fuel-efficient ones sent tens of thousands of us into showrooms to ink new deals.

But that was the only recent example of Americans gleefully breaking out the checkbook. Otherwise, we're still largely in hunker-down mode.

Consumer prices rose in June, fueled by higher energy costs, but overall inflation fell in the last year.

Some economists warn that the Federal Reserve's expansion of the money supply will spur inflation, but Fed chief Bernanke says the central bank won't let that happen.