July Employment +117,000 with Private Sector +154,000; Unemployment Rate 9.1%

I was thinking we'd have a pretty solid number, if for nothing else the previous 2 months were so horrid and had deteriorated so quickly that we'd have some reversion to a mean.  However, I would not be placing bets on it.  Indeed, the number came in quite solid at 117,000 job gains with a better number in the private sector.  Will have to see how many of these gains came from 'birth death' model but with such a bad oversold condition and sour mood on Wall St anything in the 100K range would be good enough I think.

The unemployment rate ticked down 0.1% to 9.1%.  Digging for more info and will update shortly.

Average hourly earnings up 0.4% versus last month's 0.0% (big improvement)

Average hourly workweek flat at 34.3 hours.



Labor force dropped to 63.9%, which explains the drop in the headline unemployment rate.  Awful.