Awaiting Friday's labor market data

It should be another fun-filled Friday morning this week when the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) reports the July jobs data with markets likely to cheer the loss of another quarter million or so jobs as one more sign that the U.S. economy is improving.

This morning, ADP reported(.pdf) the loss of 371,000 private sector jobs last month, slightly higher than expected, as companies continued to pare staff, unsure of the timing or the strength of a rebound. The BLS and ADP data for the services sector are shown below.
ADP reported that the overall decline in July employment was the smallest since last October, proving once again that "when you've been down so long, even the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs starts to look like up".

Just don't tell that to the millions of unemployed whose jobless benefits are about to run out.