The BLS released the employment situation summary for October today and it was a blowout report all around. The headline number showed (seasonally adjusted) job creation of 204k (with 212k private sector jobs), with the unadjusted number showing a gain of 940k jobs. The other (and possibly more important) positive information out of this report were the significant upward revisions to the job data from August and September, with August up to +238k (from +193k) and September up to +163k (from +148k). Gains were strong in manufacturing (+19k) as well, which is very good news.
In the less than good news, the Household Survey part of the report appears to be worthless, as people didn't seem to know how to answer the questions regarding their employment status due to government layoffs from the shutdown and thus we saw huge declines in all the Household Survey data (jobs, labor force, etc), although the unemployment rate only edged up .1% due to virtually all of the people that declared themselves as unemployed also "dropped out of the labor force".
Overall (assuming the BLS numerous notes about the accuracy of the Household Survey are correct), this was a blowout report (especially considering expectations) and coupled with yesterdays GDP number and recent ISM numbers shows that the economy may finally be gaining some real traction.