Economists expected last month’s non-farm payroll declines to be in the range of 125,000. However, non-farm payrolls fell just by 11,000. U.S. unemployment rate declined from 10.2% to 10%. Employment fell in construction, manufacturing and information, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.

Job market is in recovery mode. The good news is that it is still in recovery mode. It’s not getting any worse. Antulio Bomfim, a former Fed economist, said “We expect the jobless rate to start falling very gradually in the first half of 2010″.  Carl Riccadonna, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said  “We’ve still got a long way to go, but the good news in this report provides important positive momentum.” Positive momentum… that’s what we need now! This report is cheering up the market today. This enthusiasm may last for a while until another Dubai screws up with their finances.

Related Link: Wall Street Journal

Today the automobile companies delivered a nice little surprise. It seems that most of the auto companies have beat analysts expectations for sales in the month of November. It is important to keep in mind that last November was a horrible month for car sales, so this isn’t a difficult comparison, but anything positive in this part of the economy is very big news at this point.

Toyota reported a 12 increase from a year ago on an adjusted basis for number of sales days and Ford sales rose by 8.7% on that same basis. These numbers make it a real possibility that the auto industry could actually sell more cars in the month of November, 2009 than they did a year ago. This would be the first over year increase this year other than August, which was fueled by the “cash for clunkers” government ran program.

The consumer has been understandably reluctant to dive back into the economy, primarily because of the continuing weakness in the job market and the instability that surrounds the entire labor market. Things like automobile sales have been hit the hardest, so an increase out of them definitely shows that consumers have become at least a little more confident about the economy. Maybe the best news of all is that this good news about the consumer comes at a time when retailers and the economy most need the consumer, the holiday shopping season. If the consumer surprises to the upside this holiday shopping season, that will definitely pave the way for a nice rebound. Here’s hoping the job market improves and consumer confidence rises in the months to come!

Though the comparisons are easy it is certainly good news to see more customers back in the show rooms at automobile dealerships. The auto industry has been one of the very hardest hit during this economic recession and if we could see a nice stabilization in that industry it could definitely do a lot to help the economy going forward.