Jobs Report: Pretty damn bad, but there is a sliver of a silver lining

It's bad.
Borderline apocalyptic actually.

According to today's jobs report, the U.S. has lost a whopping 524,000 payrolls in December -- on net -- and more than 1 million payrolls -- on net -- in just the past two months.

The only sliver of a silver lining is that December's losses were in line with or just below most expectations. Typically, a turning point occurs when the consensus goes from being overly optimistic to on-target (that's so rare it only happens at turning points) to overly pessimistic, but we'll need more confirmation of that in the days ahead.

Doesn't matter much to the millions now unemployed. Consider again that this is a net figure -- there's always firing and hiring going on in this economy. That means it's likely much more than 1 million jobs have been lost over the past two months, offset to an unknown extent by whatever hiring is still taking place.

In short, it's bad, dudes, but I see more signs, however frail, of a turning point.