Recovery that keeps defying expectations

Well, let's just say conventional expectations. The August employment report is obviously weak - just 96,000 jobs added to the rolls and a drop in the unemployment rate for all the wrong reasons. That's below what economists had forecast (though not by that much). It's been an up and down year for jobs, reflecting an economy that's being slowly and painfully reshaped before our eyes. One key point that tends to get lost in the number crunching: Companies are simply not motivated to hire as they did during previous recoveries, but more to the point they're finding that they don't have to hire as they did during previous recoveries. No wonder more people are leaving the job market - many of them are more than just frustrated. They're lost. (That's a big reason the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent.) And yet for all the misery, there are still plenty of folks out there buying cars and shopping for clothes. This, too, is part of the recovery - a strange, bifurcated recovery that defies political rhetoric and analysts' expectations.