The numbers from BLS (the Bureau of Labor Statistics) are out.

The folks on CNBC kept describing this report as “mixed,” and I think the word they were looking for was “crappy.” Sure, the unemployment rate stayed flat at 9.5 percent.

Theoretically, we’re in recovery, yet:

about 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in July, an increase of 340,000 from a year earlier. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Remember, they don’t count in the unemployment rate.

Also note that the numbers for May and June are worse: “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised from +433,000 to +432,000, and the change for June was revised from -125,000 to -221,000.”

Yet I strongly suspect we all know what President Obama will say later today.

“Today’s jobs numbers show that while we have a long way to go, we’re moving in the right direction. It has been six straight months of private-sector job creation.” (Of course, the private-sector job-creation rate is nowhere near what it needs to be to bring down the unemployment rate. By Obama’s standard, if the private sector expands employment by one job, he can brag that we’re “moving in the right direction.”)

Hey, as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said this week, “Welcome to the recovery.”