Aug. 8--Eighteen minutes.

Economists and politicians yesterday celebrated last month's loss of just a quarter-million jobs as faint evidence that the recession might be on the wane.

But a tiny statistic on page 4 of the U.S. Labor Department's 29-page monthly opus might be the most optimistic figure in the report.

It is certainly more favorable than the slight decline in the unemployment rate to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent. That probably indicates bad news, not good.

Eighteen minutes is the amount of extra time manufacturing workers are putting in during an average work week, up to 39.8 hours in July, from 39.5 in June.

"That is a nice sign," PNC economist Robert Dye in Pittsburgh said.

"It's a forward-looking indicator. If you have a [manufacturing] plant, you want to get your existing workers utilized as far as you can before you hire new workers," he said. "That tells me there is more hiring on the way."

Even so, 14.5 million Americans are unemployed as the length of time between jobs expands. One in three unemployed people is still unemployed after 27 weeks, no surprise when the average length of unemployment has grown to 25.1 weeks.

"We're certainly not out of the woods," said Rich Milgram, chief executive of Beyond.com in King of Prussia. Beyond.com operates 15,000 online job boards that provide listings based on geography, such as PhillyJobs.com, or profession, such as MedGigs.net.

"Small businesses are showing promise, but we have a long hill to climb," he said. "Small businesses are not going to cover the cutbacks of large corporate America. We need large corporate to rebound."

In Philadelphia, he said, second-quarter job postings were down 21 percent from the first quarter.

Nationally, the 247,000 jobs lost were in nearly every sector. Business and professional services lost 38,000 jobs. Retailing was down 44,100. Manufacturing lost 52,000 jobs and construction was down 76,000.

Bright spots were 17,000 new jobs in education and health services, 9,000 jobs in leisure and hospitality, and 7,000 jobs in government, with increases in federal hiring making up for shortfalls in state hiring. Factoring out teachers, state government hiring declined by 11,300 jobs nationally.

"It's been tough," said Bob Wood, 44, of Plymouth Meeting, a father of three.

Wood's situation mirrors the economy. In the beginning of July, he counted himself among the 14.5 million unemployed, having been laid off from a temporary job on April 29. It was his fourth or fifth temporary job since he left his last permanent job in October 2007.