Report

Historically, this isn't bad, but taken with the current patterns it's not encouraging, either.

Payroll employment went up only 18,000, and a lot of that was government. The trend in this statistic has still been steadily positive--payroll employment hasn't had a negative number since August of 2003.

However, household employment, from which the actual unemployment rate is calculated, took a downward hit of 436,000 in December. This statistic has been kicking all over the place, going up 631,000 in November, dropping 244,000 in October, and rising by 507,000 in September. It's been doing this kind of thing all through 2007. The net gain for 2007 in this statistic was about 262,000 jobs.

2006, on the other hand, had only one negative number all year.

There are still almost 6 million more payroll jobs now than there were at the peak of the 90s boom. 8.4 million more jobs if you use the household numbers.