“The progress is taking place from a very deep hole,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Even if everyone who was on temporary layoff went to work tomorrow, and the only people who were unemployed were people who had been permanently laid off, we’d still have recession-level unemployment. We’d still have lost a half-decade of progress.”

One Republican close to the White House called it the first good news for Trump in weeks, while Trump called this economic recovery better than a V-shaped bounce-back he long sought and referred to it instead as “a rocket ship.”

The dynamic of Trump gleefully promoting a soaring stock market and improving economic data could present a substantial political risk in a still-fragile economic environment as millions of Americans seek jobs from cautious employers, the coronavirus rages on and protests blanket the nation.

It’s an opening for political attacks that Republicans themselves once engineered — slamming President Barack Obama in 2010 for what they viewed as prematurely promising a “recovery summer” ahead of an election season dominated by a wave of tea party protests.