80,000 Jobs Added Nationally Bad News for Economic Recovery

The nation's 80,000 added jobs in June fall far below the number hoped-for to significantly reduce the backlog of nearly 13 million unemployed -- causing the Dow to open Friday down 80 points and falling.

The Labor Department reported Friday morning, after a revised increase of 77,000 in May, that America's unemployment rate remains at 8.2 percent.

With no relief in sight for Europe's sinking economy, economists are expecting similarly tepid job growth of around 130,000 a month -- just enough to keep up with the growth in the working-age population -- for the rest of the year in the United States.

Reaction was immediate in New York. As the Stock Exchange opened on Wall Street, the market plunged by triple digits, to 120 points.

According to the New York Times, since the recovery officially began in June 2009, there have been several spates of promising job growth, which raised hopes of a strengthening recovery that were ultimately dashed. Each time economists attributed the hiring slowdown to one-time negative shocks, the newspaper reports, including last years Japanese tsunami and Arab Spring.

A healthier economy might have been able to easily withstand such shocks, but not one weakened by a debt overhang and sea of underwater homes.

At this point expectations are pretty low, so anything that is moving the job market in the right direction would be welcome, said Sophia Koropeckyj, managing director at Moodys Analytics.