According to a newsletter I subscribe to, it looks like we’re now in recession territory.

We are finally seeing a dose of reality in the jobs numbers. The BLS employment report shows that December jobs were horrid. The overall economy will soon follow.

Key Numbers

* 49,000 construction jobs were lost in December

* 31,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in December

* 24,000 retail trade jobs were lost

* Everything totaled up, private nonfarm jobs contracted by 13,000 jobs in December

* The BLS birth/death model added jobs once again. The total now shows 1,305,000 jobs added to the economy since February. That model remains somewhere in outer space

* The unemployment rate hit 5%, but the real number is far worse if one digs a little deeper

* Table A-12 paints a story that is much closer to the truth

* Measure U-6, “Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers,” rose from 8.1% last month to 8.7% this month.

Unemployment Has Bottomed

There can no longer be any doubt. The economy is in a recession, interest rates are headed lower, and unemployment has bottomed and is heading higher.

Of course, you won’t hear this in the news for a while.