April jobs report more relief than celebration

This is the same lukewarm recovery we've grown accustomed to: Closer to wonderful than horrible, but not nearly close enough to generate any momentum. As the Washington Post's Neil Irwin points out, April's 165,000-job gain is consistent with average monthly job growth of 168,000 in the last 12 months and 162,000 over the last three years. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent. Irwin writes: "This isn't a good economy. By a lot of measures it's terrible. Still, we should note what we have achieved: a durable kind of recovery that, if it can go for several more years, will eventually get us out of the muck." Also worth mentioning: L.A. County's jobless rate is nearly three percentage points higher than the national figure (about two points statewide). Here's the BLS release.

*Investors seem please with the report. The Dow has topped 15,000 for the first time, with the blue-chip index up 171 points.