WASHINGTON – Wall Street closed ahead for consecutive sessions after a strong showing Thursday. Markets have gained almost 3 percent overall in the last two trading sessions. The big winners yesterday were the NASDAQ (1.06 percent, 23.17 points) and the S&P 500 (0.91 percent, 9.81 points). The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished a bit further behind but still closed with a 0.49 percent (50.63 points) gain.

Investors should not expect much movement on the Street today when markets open this morning. Most of the momentum, positive and negative, will swing when jobs numbers are released later in the day. Futures have edged higher during the overnight hours, but everything will be decided by a collective response to the employment situation.

According to MarketWatch, payroll data for August 2010 will likely show a large decrease in non-farm employment. Economists are forecasting a drop of as much as 105,000.

Republicans will almost certainly use the gradual decline of the American employment market against their adversaries in the rapidly approaching elections. Unemployment figures do not tell the full story.

Now that government stimulus is winding down, and the temporary employment of the Census is all but completed, the private sector is being fully entrusted with our economic growth. As always it is dropping the ball. Private industry is great for innovation, but it is terrible at absorbing the workforce – most companies would rather work with a skeleton crew anyway. The only way to solve the unemployment crisis is for the government to step in. The data for August will be just one more piece of evidence backing up that claim.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, interviewed by Bloomberg News, believes this phenomenon will actually result in the stimulus impeding growth in the next fiscal quarter. When the government was making housing credits and “cash for clunkers” available the economy grew at a modest but acceptable rate. Now that this funding has dried up, the economy will sink back to a flat growth rate.

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