Friday’s jobs report spurred another big rally for stocks, with major indexes up as much as 1.74% at the close. Since Wednesday’s better than excepted ISM manufacturing report, the bulls have taken control, recovering a significant portion of the losses realized in the month of August in just 3 days.

The Labor Department’s report showed that nonfarm payrolls fell by 54,000 in August, a figure significantly lower than the expectations of 110,000. However, this marks the third straight month that U.S. employment has fallen.

Still, the numbers from the jobs report and other recent economic data should be good enough to quell any remaining fears of an imminent double dip, and convince the Fed to hold off from launching a new asset purchase program at this month’s meeting.

Despite the recent gains in the market, and economic data coming in better than expected, Friday’s jobs report did not suggest a quick return to growth for the job market, or for the broader economy.

Private sector hiring, while coming in above expectations of 40,000, only added 67,000 jobs in August. This level is not nearly strong enough to start chipping away at the US’s massive 9.6% unemployment rate.

Moving forward, it is important to point out that private jobs growth will continue to be hindered by the 82,000 Census workers that will be let go in coming months. Also, the private sector growth rate has been cut to roughly plus -78,000. That rate was plus -150,000 earlier in 2010 when the recovery seemed to be gaining momentum.

An earlier report published by the ADP and Macroeconomic Advisors showed that the ISM’s index of national services activity fell to 51.5 in August from 54.3 in July. The August number was lower than expectations of 53.5.

After a quick look at the data, it’s clear that the recent rally is focusing on the positive aspects from a mixed bag of information. The bulls needed an excuse to push prices back up into the middle of the trading range, and this week, they had a few reasons. “It is a real testament to the sentiment in the market right now that over one year into an economic recovery, capital markets are getting absolutely euphoric over an employment report that still shows a fundamentally weak labor market, with the momentum still soft," wrote Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Neil Dutta.

Regardless of how you want to interpret each piece of economic data, Dutta’s statement is true. It just goes to show how volatile this range is, and particularly how news-driven the short term trending is. To me, the big picture hasn’t really changed, and until we start to see some continuously convincing data one way or the other, traders should get comfortable maneuvering up and down this trading range.