Very possibly.  Have jobs increased enough to turn those orange areas into peach?  If so, perhaps  Stimmung has yet to catch up with reality.

On the other hand, the decrease of jobs is arguably a consequence of certain neoliberal reforms (and business policies shifting from Rhineland Capitalist to neoliberal), not the consequence of lack of such "reforms" as the Anglo-Saxon press argues. I.e., I see a loopback effect between the rhetoric and real socio-economic problems (one of which I named as first of three reasons).

I wrote it would be a "stretch" to attribute unpleasant  conditions in Germany to the English language press (and its "neoliberal" rhetoric).  What you are describing is the one way I could think of where such blaming might happen.  But this is giving the English press even more credit than Jerome does: basically it is saying that if things are bad in Germany, it's because Germans (Schroeder?) were too weak and/or gullible in the face of the neoliberal rhetoric, caved in, and implemented "reforms" that caused the job situation they had through 2005.  That's a totally plausible scenario and very well may be true.  But it seems a bit too pat and convenient: if something is going well, it's because we are doing things the German/European/Social Democratic way, but if something is going bad, it's because the Anglo-Saxons bullied/seduced/tricked us into doing it.  (My own no doubt too simplistic guess as to why much of Germany was orange was that this was due to still lingering effects of the reunification.)

Again, it may very well be true, that the 2000 to 2005 drop in employment in many parts of Germany were due to Anglo-American-driven neoliberal "reforms" (in the late 90s/early 2000s?), while the 2006 improvement in the job situation was due to a return to German/Social democratic form of capitalism (in the last 2-3 years?).  But I guess I would like to see that case argued in more detail.

Rien ne réussit comme le succès.