Prepping for first big economic report of 2011

It's the December employment report, and judging by the hopeful indicators of the past few weeks, you would expect a large number of new jobs - perhaps a lower jobless rate as well. But Friday's data might prove disappointing. The consensus estimate is for a gain of 135,000 jobs, which is decent but nowhere near the number required to help millions of out-of-work Americans (that would require adding several hundred thousand jobs each month for many, many months). December could prove especially tricky to decipher because it's typically an oddball month (made all the odder because of bad weather that might have put a damper on new hires). Economists at Deutsche Bank (via Business Insider) only expect 100,000 new jobs, but they also believe that the number will be revised upward, as was the case with the October and November reports. They also suspect that the unemployment rate might drop from 9.8 percent to 9.6 percent. It's really the same old story: The economy is getting noticeably better, but the jobs picture is likely to stay weak for much of the year.