Many were expecting good news out of the Labor Department when it released the nonfarm payroll report for July. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case -- and the morning has taken a decidedly bearish tone.

According to the Labor Department, 131,000 jobs were lost during the month. The drop was attributed to the fact that 143,000 Census-related jobs were cut. Analysts expected overall employment to absorb the number of temporary jobs cut and show a drop of 65,000. When revising payrolls for May and June the picture turned even bleaker. The Labor Department revised the reading for those two months lower by 97,000, meaning fewer jobs than originally thought were created.

This morning's nonfarm payroll report was a good news/bad news sort of situation. The good news? The nation added 431,000 jobs last month. The bad news? Of those jobs, 411,000 were added thanks to the Census, meaning they were temporary workers.

In reality, payrolls advanced by 20,000 during May (taking the temporary jobs out of the equation), a rather disappointing number (and far short of the expected increase of 540,000).

Cue the alarms, the warning sirens, the panic and the bear stampede on the Street today ... the U.S. nonfarm payrolls dropped unexpectedly in December.

The good news? November nonfarm payrolls were actually revised higher, reflecting a gain of 4,000 jobs. Despite November's gain, payrolls dropped by 4.2 million in 2009, bringing the two-year total of job losses for the recession to 7.3 million. As for the official unemployment rate, it remained at 10% during December. That said, the data that includes discouraged workers and those forced to work part time increased to 17.3% from 17.2%. Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of the report was that there were "few signs of further improvement in labor conditions."

According to a report released by the Labor Department this morning, U.S. nonfarm payrolls dropped by 663,000 in March and the unemployment rate ascended to 8.5% from 8.1%. January's job losses were revised to 741,000 -- which is the worst since 1949. The Labor Department also reported 651,000 jobs lost in February. For the record, March was the fourth straight month with more than 600,000 job losses; a record that no one wanted to see set.

During the past six months, nearly 3.7 million jobs have been lost, or nearly 3% of the workforce. The percentage loss is the second largest in 50 years. Turning to specific industries, service industries saw 358,000 jobs lost and goods-producing industries saw 305,000 jobs lost. While job losses spanned the spectrum of jobs, health care actually saw an increase of 14,000. According to the report, only 22% of the 271 industries were hiring during March.