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The April jobs report offers a little something for both bulls and bears. Perhaps the only definite thing that can be said is the recession debate will continue.

The Labor Department said Friday the U.S. economy shed 20,000 jobs last month, not anywhere near the 75,000-85,000 decline forecast by most economists. The unemployment rate also unexpected fell to 5% from 5.1%, vs. expectations of a rise to 5.2%.

Predictions of a deep recession suddenly look premature, with a few economists now suggesting that the U.S. economy may even narrowly avoid the R-word. While payrolls have fallen for four straight months (with a total loss of 260,000), job lossese are way below the recession norm. During the last 3 recessions, there was a string of job losses that lasted for a minimum of 10 months, with the largest single month job loss at more than 300,000. (see related post).

“It appears that the economy is still just dancing around the perimeter separating recession from a growth slowdown,” said Michael Englund, economist at research firm Action Economics. “The payroll figures on their own still indicate that the economy is in recession, but just barely. And the outlook is more ambiguous when the other major indicators are added to the mix, as the bulk of other reports are notably out-performing a recession path.”

Or, as T.J. Marta, fixed-income strategist at RBC Capital Markets aruges, “if the current period does eventually get classified as a recession, it could very well be characterized as a ‘joblossless recession,’ much as the 2003 recovery was called the ‘jobless recovery.‘”

The jobs report give bears some ammunition, too. There are “some ‘devil-type’ characteristics in the employment report,” said Merrill Lynch’s North American Economist David Rosenberg. For example, he said, while companies did not cut as many positions as expected, they cut the hours instead. In addition, where there was a nice rebound in the household survey, it was all because of part-time employment. May is likely going to prove to be a much more difficult month for payrolls, he said, and “we could see the first triple-digit decline since March 2003.”

Confidence among chief executives slipped again in the first quarter, according to The Conference Board. At 38, the measure is a point below last quarter’s measure and is now the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2000, when it was at 31, the research group said Monday.

A reading below 50 reflects more negative than positive responses.

Only 3% of the CEOs surveyed said economic conditions had improved, down from 7% in the last quarter. Only about one in four expected employment levels in their own industry to pick up, down from about 42% a year ago. Some 28% of CEOs saw employment in their field falling, down from 32% a year earlier.

But the longer-term future appears somewhat brighter to more executives than before. Some 19% saw better economic conditions in the next six months, up from 16% in the fourth-quarter survey. And some 23% said their own industries would improve in the next six months, up from 17% in the last quarter.

“CEOs’ assessment of current conditions suggests we’re still mired in a period of extremely slow growth, and while their short-term outlook moderately improved, they remain quite cautious,” Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a prepared statement.

The survey comes on the heels of a slew of negative economic data.

Global Insight said Friday it sees “very little momentum” for spending in the second quarter and that consumer sentiment readings suggest downside risks for consumer spending through the first half of the year. The March consumer price index is also unlikely to ease concerns about rising inflationary pressure, the research organization said.

Housing starts will likely to drop by as much as 10% in March figures due Wednesday, Global Insight said.

“Conditions in the housing market are as bad as they have ever been. Credit is tight, raw material costs are rising, inventories remain high, house prices are falling in more places—at an accelerated rate nationally—and the economy is losing jobs. We think that housing starts will drop another 20% before they hit bottom,” Global Insight said.

Nonfarm payrolls have shown three consecutive months of declines, for the first time since June 2003, and this might only be the beginning of more bad news from the U.S. labor market, some analysts said.

Kathy Lien, chief strategist at DailyFX.com, said that during the three recessions in the U.S. economy over the past three decades, there were a string of job losses that lasted for a minimum of 10 months. “We are already beginning to see this trend unfold and it will be months before we will actually see job growth,” she said. “The largest single month job loss in each of the recessions was more than 300,000,” Lien said. “We wouldn’t be surprised to see the same degree of job losses in this business cycle.”

During the 2000 to 2002 recession, the U.S. had as many as 15 consecutive months of negative payrolls between March 2001 and May 2002, according to Ashraf Laidi, chief foreign-exchange strategist at CMC Markets in New York. The 1990 recession saw job losses continue for 11 consecutive months between July 1990 and May 1991, he said.

“In the current slowdown (not yet officially declared a recession), we’re only in the third-straight monthly decline in payrolls,” he wrote to clients. “Thus, to be consistent with previous recessions, payrolls will likely register negative readings for the rest of the year into [the first quarter] 2009,” he said. “This also means that the unemployment rate will likely climb to as high as 5.9% to 6.0%.”

But not every economist is so bearish. Tony Crescenzi, a strategist at Miller Tabak, said today’s jobs data support “the idea that the contraction will be short and shallow - the Great Moderation of economic growth seen over the past 25 years is continuing.” Data on the average workweek and aggregate hours, the GDP proxy, are encouraging. “The workweek advanced a tenth of an hour to 33.8, an increase that is the income equivalent of several hundred thousand new jobs,” he said.

The payroll drop of 80,000 last month is far below the type of decrease normally seen in an economic recession when job losses tend to move to as high as 300,000 per month, Crescenzi said. In the second month of the 2001 recession, 281,000 jobs were lost. Similarly, in the 1990-1991 recession, 204,000 jobs were lost in the second month of the recession.

“The idea of short and shallow was the main theme that emerged this week on the economy, particularly following the Chicago index on Monday and the two ISM [Institute of Supply Management] indexes, and today’s data fit with this theme,” he wrote in a research note. “I expect the short and shallow idea to dominate in May when tax rebate checks are spent. Whether it lasts is a consideration for another day.”