Welcome to the weekend. We hope all of you had a great trading week. It was certainly an interesting one, and especially interesting when factoring in today's employment news. As has been the case with every recent unemployment report, the media's giving you just enough information to be dangerous, but not enough information to be helpful. As usual, we have to pick up where they left off. Let's just start there today. Good, But Not Great Here's what you probably know - the economy added 204,000 jobs last month (at least according to the Department of Labor), yet the employment rate edged up from 7.2% to 7.3%. While a higher unemployment rate is generally a negative, most investors know to take the number with a grain of salt, as the 'unemployed' and 'in the work force' numbers used to come up with the unemployment rate figure aren't necessarily accurate indications of what they're supposed to measure. There's not as much of a way to dismiss the number of net jobs created in October though - 204,000 is a then-and-now comparison. You could argue the displacement of a few hundred thousand government workers during the shutdown could have skewed the results, but the impact of the shutdown ended up being minimal, with most all of those furloughed employees getting back to work before October's job-polling took place. The point is, last month's payroll figure is statistically significant, even if not perfect. It's still not the whole story though, and when you take a step back and look at all of last month's data, the employment picture isn't as encouraging as it seemed on the surface today. First and foremost, the number of people in the U.S. who have a job fell from 144.308 million in September to 143.568 million on October - a tumble of 740,000. That doesn't mean three-quarters of a million people involuntarily lost their jobs last month. It does mean, however, that more scrutiny of the allegedly-good numbers is merited. One of those other important numbers is the sheer number of people who (whether they have a job or not) consider themselves to be part of the eligible-and-willing labor force. That figure fell from 155.559 million in September to 154.839 million in October. The number of people who are not technically in the labor force but still want a job didn't change much as a result, however, and now stands 6.162 million versus 6.163 million in September. What's really interesting is how we saw a HUGE plunge in the labor force participation rate... the number of people in the population who also consider themselves to be part of the labor force. It fell from 63.2% to a multi-year low of 62.8% last month, suggesting a fairly significant "I give up" attitude among the unemployed population. That ratio's dip was mirrored by the employment/population ratio, which simply compares the number of people who are working to the size of the population. That figure fell from September's reading of 58.6% to 58.3% last month, which is also a multi-year low - and discouraging - reading. The best bottom-line data point of all, however, may just be the number of folks who are now unemployed (for any reason) but don't want to be. That figure ramped up a little last month, from 11.255 million to 11.272 million... an increase of 17,000. Given all those numbers, you may be wondering how in the world the Department of Labor came up with a positive job growth number of 204,000 new payrolls. The answer is a little convoluted, but suffice it to say the DOL doesn't come up with the payroll growth figure by crunching all the numbers. It just uses some of them. Ditto for the employment rate. All told, last month's employment snapshot isn't nearly as encouraging as the headline numbers would suggest. Now, I'm not saying the employment scenario is bad. I actually think it's good - though not great - despite October's numbers. I do think October was something of a setback, however, and that setback wasn't entirely fueled the fiasco in Washington. Add it to my theory that 2014 isn't going to be anywhere near as bullish as most analysts and investors expect (though it will be basically bullish). In the meantime, I don't see anything in last month's jobs numbers that's going to accelerate the Fed's decision to taper its QE program. Fuhgettaboutit One of the most important lessons I ever learned about writing was to not make a story bigger than it really is. So, I'm not even going to try and suggest today was an important day. The gain today was little more than a dead-cat bounce. That's it. Granted, the S&P 500 found support at, and bounced off of, it's 20-day moving average line, and the VIX rolled over when it brushed its 20-day moving average line. It's just one day in what's going to be something of a multi-day process for the market to figure out what it's going to do. The good news is, this rebound has simply brought the market back to what's now become a two-week stagnation. This has allowed the S&P 500's Bollinger band lines to really squeeze in on the market, which - ironically - are going act like a pressure cooker and blow the market out of a rut with a huge, trade-worthy move. Problem is, there's still not a lot of clarity as to which direction that's going to be. If we had to venture a guess though, we'd still bet on a dip. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it though. For now, let's just worry about having a good weekend. We'll get back to the market on Monday.