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I may be generally pessimistic about the economy, but we did get a good jobs report today. It wasn’t just census hiring either. It was legitimately strong private sector job growth. The unemployment rate rose at the same time — and as the CBPP chart on the right suggests, this means we’re probably in for a long, slow, grueling, recovery — but Eric Lascelles of TD Securities explains why a rising unemployment rate isn’t entirely a bad thing:

The household survey argued for an even better 550,000 job gain in April, but the number of people looking for jobs rose by an even larger 805,000. As such, the unemployment rate went up. However, the interpretation can be spun in a positive direction since job applicants must be feeling good to seek entry to the labour force in such large numbers.

Steve Benen’s employment chart is below. On the less bright side, long-term unemployment increased and wage growth was flat. The latter is obviously normal during the early stages of a recovery, but still, it needs to change if consumer spending is going to keep fueling growth. Overall, though, the report was good news. I’m still sort of pessimistic, but then again, I’m always sort of pessimistic.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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