There will be no way to argue that the job market is healthy until we see sustainable job growth but this morning's monthly non-farm payroll data (preliminary figures for November show net payroll declines of only 11,000 workers, the best monthly performance since December 2007) continues to show that the trend in layoffs is moving in the right direction.

The Obama administration will continue to get heat as long as net layoffs are still being recorded (and they will be in trouble if the jobs picture does not improve by the mid-term elections next year) but if we look at the monthly job figures so far this year, it is hard not to be optimistic about the trend:

From this chart it looks like those predicting net job gains by year-end or early 2010 at the latest may in fact be proved correct, which would be great news for the U.S. economy and stock market alike.