If you are a regular reader of this StreetWise column, you know the importance that I believe the employment picture has on our commercial real estate markets. In fact, there is no other metric that more profoundly impacts the fundamentals of both residential and commercial real estate.

This is why last Friday’s jobs report was particularly troubling. In June, U.S. payrolls lost 125,000 jobs, the first monthly loss of 2010. These losses were due, mainly, to the elimination of 225,000 temporary government census workers. Just as 441,000 new census temporary jobs skewed the numbers higher months ago (and the administration seemed downright giddy over this “job growth”), June’s job eliminations have skewed the numbers to the downside.

The official unemployment rate, interestingly, dropped from 9.7 percent in May to 9.5 percent even though the market lost 125,000 jobs. You may ask how this can happen as elementary school mathematics would indicate this is an impossibility. The fact is that something called the “participation rate” impacts the official unemployment rate calculation. While the market lost 125,000 jobs, simultaneously, 652,000 discouraged Americans stopped looking for work. After their job search has ceased for more than 30 days, these unemployed workers are no longer technically considered unemployed. This quirk in the official rate calculation caused the reduction seen in June.