HOW BAD ARE THOSE JOBS NUMBERS? THIS BAD: May-June Hiring Pace Just 10% That Of February-April.

Weak economic reports usually contain glimmers of hope. Friday’s jobs report was just grim.

Employers added a scant 18,000 workers in June, the Labor Department said, far below views for 80,000. May’s gain was cut to 25,000 from the initial estimate of 54,000. It’s the starkest evidence of an economic soft patch: The May-June hiring pace was just 10% of the 215,000 average in February-April.

“It was an abysmal report,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight.

The jobless rate ticked up 0.1 point to 9.2%, the third straight increase, even though the labor force declined by 272,000.

And, of course, if the trend holds these lousy numbers will be quietly revised in an even lousier direction next week.

UPDATE: Reader Laurie Borski writes: “Soft patch my foot! I suppose that Investors’ use of the term ‘soft patch’ in the title of their web article means their thesaurus did not contain a delicate term for ‘quicksand.'”