As the labor market has improved over the past couple of years, a litany of reasons has been offered to explain why the picture is really not so good:

The unemployment rate is falling because people are dropping out of the labor force. The job numbers are being inflated by suspect seasonal adjustments. The birth-death model, which the Labor Department uses to estimate jobs from newly created companies, is providing a boost that will turn out to not be there. The real problem is long-term unemployment.

The trouble for those who would be negative is that none of those things are true now.

The proportion of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than six months fell below one-third in June for the first time in five years. The seasonal adjustments and the birth-death model all worked to reduce the reported job gain, not increase it. The household survey found 407,000 more people had jobs, well above the 288,000 figure in the establishment survey.

The so-called U-4 unemployment rate, which adds to the unemployment rate those who say they are not looking for work because they are discouraged, is down to 6.5 percent, a six-year low. The U-6 rate, which throws in every group pessimists can think of — including treating part-time workers as unemployed if they say they would rather have a full-time job — is 12.1 percent, also a six-year low.

But my search for something negative did find one thing. The teenage unemployment rate went up, to 21 percent from 19.2 percent. That rate is still well below where it was last summer, but it is something.