This is your stock market.
This is your stock market on heroin.
This is your market's heart, addicted to a woman that should be in prison, and a clown-car stuffed with 535 critters that have ignored violations of their own laws, and in fact cheer them on, for 100 years -- and thus should also be in prison.
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 142,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 6.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services and in health care.
That's a crap number.
What's worse is that the unadjusted number from the household survey is negative 618,000!
You want more bad news? This month 1,343,000 people left the labor force, presumably because they were unable to find work.
Now granted, August is a month for firing and people giving up -- at least over the last few years. It has been bad in both 2012 and 2013. Still, those who were expecting continued "strength" didn't get it.
In addition the previously-seen "improvement" in the employment participation rate appears to have topped -- so much for climbing out of that hole too.
Want a happy face on this report? There isn't one, although if you force me to find something "good" I guess I can say this about it -- it's not much nastier than the August firing seasons of the last two years, and weekly hours didn't go in the toilet (which would have added a massive amount of insult to the injury.)
See 'ya next month -- when you might be able to find a job.