Jobs Report Shows Modest Loss in Jobs for December

The monthly jobs report is out and it is not as rosy as many had hoped.

The bad news – non farm payroll was down by 85,000. Economists had been predicting smaller losses or in some cases, even modest gains.

As disappointing as those numbers are, there was a lot to be happy about in the monthly report. For starters, November’s number were revised upward and now show a 3,000 job gain – the first gain in jobs since the start of the recession. Also encouraging is that December continued to show an increase in temp hiring. Temp jobs are often a good barometer of recovery since companies will test the waters with temp workers as economic conditions improve and then later return to using permanent employees.