Decent jobs report

Better than many had expected, but that's not saying much. Bad news is that the U.S. lost 54,000 payroll jobs in August and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent the previous month. The good news is that private employers added 67,000 jobs to their rolls (phasing out of Census workers led to the overall 54,000-job loss), and June and July employment were revised up - substantially. July went from a loss of 131,000 jobs to a loss of 54,000. The stock market is choosing to go with the good news, at least in early trading, with the Dow up over 100 points. From Bloomberg:

"The double-dip talk was probably misplaced," said Maury Harris, chief economist at UBS Securities LLC in New York, who projected private payrolls would rise by 75,000. "From a historical perspective, things are still soft. The economy ought to be doing better."

Of course, this doesn't change anything. The economy remains extremely weak, with little sign that private employers are ready to hire nearly enough workers to jack up growth. Still, the August report could have been far worse, which in the expectation game is all that matters. Here's the BLS release.