September was another month of slow jobs growth, the government reports. Private payrolls increased 104,000 last month, according to the Labor Department’s establishment survey. (Total payrolls, which include government jobs, rose 114,000.) That’s up from August’s revised gain of 97,000 for the private sector, but no one will be impressed with these numbers. Nonetheless, there’s no smoking gun here for arguing that the labor market is collapsing. It may be suffering a slow and lingering death, in which case the last rites may be administered at some point down the road. In the here and now, however, private-sector job growth of 104,000 doesn’t signal that the economy’s in recession, even if it’s not hard to envision a change for the worse in the near-term future. Nor does the 1.7% year-over-year growth in private payrolls through last month tell us that the jig is up. It’d be another matter if September data so far from other sources screamed of free-fall. But that’s not the case either (see here and here, for instance).