Story per The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 96,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The politically important unemployment rate, obtained by a separate survey of U.S. households, fell to 8.1% from 8.3%, mainly because of more people dropping out of the work force.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected a gain of 125,000 in payrolls and an 8.3% jobless rate. …

Compounding the weak August report, July and June payroll numbers were revised down—July payrolls rose 141,000, compared with the initially reported 163,000, and June was up 45,000, versus an earlier estimate of 64,000.

So not only were the latest month’s figures unexpectedly bad, but the previous two months’ unexpectedly bad figures are now unexpectedly worse.

In March I wrote extensively about how and why media economists are constantly caught off-guard by bad economic news. It’s half a year later and the same as it ever was:

America’s plunge into a Dark Ages of economic superstition happened at the end of the Bush administration, was  impelled by the incessant chanting of media shamans, and capped with a high priest of Keynesianism so devout he openly wondered why destroying one industry to promote another wasn’t bringing about a net increase in jobs.

We have, since then, been witness to the hilarious display of each new release of economic data not only being consistently negative, but being pronounced by media experts as “unexpected,” as they sit like Linus in the pumpkin patch devoutly expecting The Great Keynesian Recovery, Charlie Brown! Then as each data cycle returns the entirely predictable “unexpected” news, they don’t repent but double down on their fallacious nostrums like the 450 prophets of Ba’al.