D'oh! Economy Fumbles At the 1 Yard Line

Not that this heralds the kind of economic End of Days that the left will surely lament, but what a heart breaker.

Employers sliced payrolls by 4,000 in August, the first drop in four years, a stark sign that a painful credit crunch that has unnerved Wall Street is putting a strain on the national economy.

The latest snapshot of the employment climate, released by the Labor Department on Friday, also showed that the unemployment rate held steady at 4.6 percent, mainly because hundreds of thousands of people left the work force for any number of reasons.
...
The drop of 4,000 jobs in August was the first decline since August 2003.

Don't we know it.  I noted a month ago that the economy was just one month away from tying Reagan's record-setting 48 consecutive months of positive job growth.  (As Reagan's streak lasted well into Bush 41's administration, Bush 43 had already captured the single-administration record, his 47 months of unbroken job creation trouncing Clinton's longest streak of 33 months.)

Interestingly, each of these periods (the three longest job growth streaks in American history) followed a major tax cut.  Since Bush's 2003 investment income tax cuts were the boldest cut since Reagan's 1986 tax cuts, the boom to follow was destined to challenge Reagan's streak for the title.  And with economists forecasting the August number to come in above 100,000, I was readying the confetti.

Do bear in mind that the -4,000 reading is preliminary - the Labor Department will release a revised August reading next month and the revisions are usually sizable.  For now though, the market seems to be in a woeful mood, despite the fact that this makes the Fed's presumptive rate cut later this month a bit more assured.

Previously:
47th Consecutive Month of Job Growth, 1 Away From Record
46th Consecutive Month of Job Growth
45th Consecutive Month of Job Growth
43rd Consecutive Month of Job Growth