This job chart is banned at the White House

Sure, there were a few decent signs: The length of the workweek increased slightly, as did hourly wages. Also, there were small declines in the number of part time workers and long term unemployed. And at least the unemployment rate didn't go up (it remained flat at 9.5 percent). But as you can see from the chart (courtesy of Calculated Risk), the job hole created by the recession is massive - and there's little indication of a strong uptick in the second half of the year. Guess everyone forgot about those media reports a few months back about how the economy would rebound quickly and solidly.

Economists are sounding especially gloomy about the report. From the WSJ's roundup in Real Time Economics:

--The "Great Recession" has officially morphed into the "Great Stall". There are no signs in this morning's report on July employment of building momentum for the second half of this year. If anything, there are more signs of a deteriorating labor situation . -Steven Blitz, Majestic Research

--Non-Census payroll growth has averaged just 12,000 in the latest three months, which, no matter how you might try to spin it, is just plain lousy. -Joshua Shapiro, MFR Inc.

--The rate of job creation remains less than about half of what it needs to be just to keep pace with population growth, let alone make significant progress on getting the unemployed back into jobs. The lack of increase in demand for temporary employees also indicates that employers are not feeling a need to ramp up hiring and provides a discouraging sign for the months to come. -Heather Boushey, Center for American Progress

--The state of the labor market is poor. People are dropping out of the labor force. Even the temporary employment fell indicating the sorry state of the job market. Future employment gains won't be robust and the jobless rate will fall only slowly because businesses are more cautious about hiring at this stage of economic recovery compared to previous episodes. A double-dip is not likely, but not out of the question. -Sung Won Sohn, Smith School of Business and Economics