July jobs numbers rise, but still weak

The economy added slightly more jobs than expected in July, though not enough to ease mounting concern that a double-dip recession could soon take hold.

The Labor Department said employers added 117,000 jobs last month. Analysts had said that anything above 100,000 would be good news.

The awful numbers for June and May were revised slightly upward, to gains of 56,000 and 46,000 respectively.

Still, a day after the market plummeted amid concerns over slow economic growth and Europe's debt crises, the news will likely do little to ease the concerns of investors or give hope to those out of work. Most economists believe the economy needs to add around 250,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with the rate of growth in the workforce.

The overall unemployment rate ticked down slightly, to 9.1 percent from 9.2 percent, but that was in part because of people who gave up looking for work after growing discouraged, and who are therefore no longer counted in the statistics.