Is this just another false start?

Maybe.

Dept of Labor was supposed to publish their monthly payroll report on the 5th.  Now that they seem to have suspended their tantrum, and are no longer spending money to deliberately inflict pain on the citizenry, they got around to actually doing their job.

Seeking Alpa notes that the numbers are not good. The consensus was that we should be treading water, but the economy actually got measurably worse instead, with an increase of only 148k jobs (remember, we need 175k-200k to tread water).

And in Manufacturing the numbers are dismal as well, as manufacturing employment remained flat (total growth for the past 12 months is about 30-40k, instead of the 180-240k we need). 

The trade balance for the past year shows we are still losing money by consuming more as a nation than we create (hey, that would be a Keynesian dream, and would fix the economy, if Keynesians weren't full of horse hocky), to the tune of near $400B a year.  Reported plans for reducing the Fed's Quantitative Easing seem to have evaporated with this report, and the situation in other countries isn't any better, and there is talk that this economic up cycle (the one I predict will last maybe though the end of next year) might be just another false start.