Friday's Pathetic Job Numbers

Well, it turns out that the ADP estimate was wrong, and the job creation numbers were absolutely pathetic, there were only 39,000 jobs created in November, somewhere around 100K less than is needed to account for growth in the labor market, the unemployment rate went up 0.2% to 9.8%.

And in case you are wondering, that increase in unemployment is not an artifact of the discouraged looking for work, because there was no increase in the labor participation rate, which means that we just had a really bad month.

One month does not a double dip make, but when you realize that this is juxtaposed with the stimulus money tapering down, it is an issue of concern.

Then again, my anecdotal data, job shops calling me, is pretty strong, so YMMV.