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In a stunning reversal, most economists had expected a better jobs report, but it was announced on Friday, that only 142,000 jobs were created in September.

Even with the dismal job report the nation’s unemployment rate held steady at 5.1%.

The Associated Press reported employers added just 142,000 jobs in September, and the government sharply lowered its estimate of gains in July and August by a combined 59,000. Monthly job growth averaged a mediocre 167,000 in the July-September quarter, down from 231,000 in the April-June period.

The report issued by the Labor Department had very little positive news on the strength of job creation in the U.S., as the report showed that businesses are just not creating enough jobs.

One of many disturbing parts of the Labor Department’s report was that the civilian labor force participation rate declined to 62.4 percent in September; the rate had been 62.6 percent for the prior 3 months. The employment-population ratio edged down to 59.2 percent in September, after showing little movement for the first 8 months of the year.

Now part of this is reflective of the baby boomers retiring in greater numbers, but still this is historically high no matter how you spin this.

The news continued to get worse as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that a record 94,610,000 people (ages 16 and over) were not in the labor force in September, no matter how you slice it this is not a way to have a sustainable economy.

Wall Street first reacted negatively, but then rebounded as now it looks highly unlikely the Federal Reserve would be raising Interest rates this year.

“There’s nothing good in this morning’s report,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago. “We had very low levels of job creation, wage growth isn’t budging and the unemployment rate would have risen if the labor force participation rate hadn’t fallen.”

Employers reduced hiring the past few months as China’s economy slowed, a shrinking global economy, which in turn means fewer U.S. products exported.

The Associated Press reported that lackluster growth overseas has reduced exports of U.S. factory goods and cut into the overseas profits of large companies. Canada, the largest U.S. trading partner, is in recession. China, the second-largest economy after the United States, is growing far more slowly. And emerging economies, from Brazil to Turkey, are straining to grow at all.

Gad Levanon of The Conference Board stated, “While disappointing compared with expectations, this slower job growth is more in line with the mediocre GDP growth of recent years, and also suggests that the very low productivity growth during that time is not sustainable. Part of the weakness in the recent slowdown in job growth was a result of the drop in manufacturing employment which is clearly suffering from weak exports growth. Even if employment continues to grow at about 150,000 per month, the lack of any signs of a recovery in labor force growth suggests that the unemployment rate will continue to go down, perhaps going below 5 percent by the end of the year.”

No matter how anyone try’s to spin this report it shows that the nation’s economy is far from recovering from the financial crisis of 2008-09, and with the recession having ended in June 2009, this marks the weakest recovery in the post-World War II era.

This will fuel the fire on both sides of the political spectrum leading up to next year’s presidential election.