payrolls

ADP excludes government jobs. It's also notoriously volatile and has a history of big misses in forecasting the official Labor Department payroll report. But perhaps most important is that it just doesn't jibe with other recent data points -- or the recovery's pace.

ADP's latest report showed a total that was nearly triple what economists were expecting. It's only one month's data, and it's too soon to call it a hiring boom. However, the report offers more hope and some evidence that the nation's long job drought is ending.

The Dow jumped skyward on Wednesday as stocks rallied around the globe on a stream of strong economic news, both abroad and in the U.S. A less anxious outlook for European sovereign debt also helped.

Stocks started a traditionally tough month for the market with sharp gains Wednesday after a key report on U.S. manufacturing came in much better than expected. The major indexes rose over 2.5%.

The unemployment rate now stands at 9.8 percent, we learned Friday morning and, to quote Claude Raines in Casablanca, the market was shocked -- shocked! -- by the news, at least initially. True, that is a brutally painful unemployment figure. To put it in perspective, the nation hasn't had this...

June payrolls fell by 467,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was higher than the 365,000 jobs economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected employers would shed. The BLS said job losses were widespread across the major industry sectors, with large declines occurring in...