Recovery

It's not just a decent jobs report. It means that the county is in recovery. Even the small uptick in the unemployment rate to 7.9 percent happened for a good reason, because more people are out looking for work.

There's nothing in here for Mitty. The 171,000 number far exceeded expectations, which were down around 100,000 to 120,000 from what I saw. More important are the past revisions. On the first Friday in September, when we got the August report, it said 96,000 jobs. Lots of hootin' and hollerin' on the right. Then it was revised upward to 142,000. Now it's been revised upward again to 192,000. September was also revised upward from 114,000 to 148,000.

The jobless rate is down a full percentage point over the past year. So far this year, 1.57 million jobs have been added. That's on top of 1.84 million added last year. We now average around 157,000 jobs per month this year for 2012.

This isn't just a fairly decent situation. This is a recovery. The monthly report is here. I'm looking forward to this thread, both the conspiracy theories about Chicago and the complaining that so many Americans are finding work.

UPDATE: Think Progress just posted these numbers, which answer some comments I saw in thread. Obama's first 45 months, +759,000 jobs. Bush's first 45, -1,168,000 jobs. Good thing for Dubya no one was obsessing over jobs reports then. Link here.