Unemployment Falls to 9%

The bad news: Just 80,000 new jobs were created in October, when around 100,000 were expected. That’s the fewest in four months, the AP reports. The good news: The unemployment rate fell to 9%, its first decline since July; it had been expected to hold steady at 9.1%. In further good news, September payrolls were revised up to 158,000 from 103,000; August was revised upward, too; average hourly earnings rose; and the number of people unemployed for more than 27 weeks—considered the long-term unemployed—dropped 366,000 to 5.9 million.

The Wall Street Journal reports that futures are all over the place, and notes that it's going to be hard to get an accurate read on how investors are responding to the news, as the European situation clouds the picture. (More unemployment stories.)