Non-farm payrolls up 243,000.

That's the biggest gain since Feb 2009.

This is versus an adjusted increase of 203,000 in December.

Job growth was widespread throughout the sectors:

70,000 service/professional
40,000 hospitality
50,000 manufacturing
20,000 construction

Number of hours worked is on a growth trend... part-time employment is rising... all indicators are for job growth. This is the first report in a couple years that is this clearly pointing toward growth.

"Unemployment rate" is 8.3%, but as previously discussed, that's just a political number. So many are displaced from the job market and not looking for a year or two on end that the calculation of unemployment is immaterial.

 

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It's another MEDIA LIE!

There were 700 million new unemployment claims!

They're not including all the people that fell off the employment radar!

Bush is my hero!

Odumba is skewing the data.. still a horrible president!

/a typical cut from the comment sections of places like yahoo finance
/edit i see you already used one of them, Abaddon

 

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I've pointed out in the past the crap that passes for 'good news'. However, this is some actual good news, for once.

Keep that kind of job growth up for another 3-4 months and we'll be seeing some tangible goodness come from it. Confidence increases... spending increases... fueling more job growth... etc.

 

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That's a big number. Now Republicans will really push for tax breaks on the job creat... I mean rich people.

 

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More good news -- job growth of 257,000 for private (non-governmental) payrolls.

 

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1.2 milllion people dropped out of the labor force in January placing the participation rate @ 63.5%







So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.

 

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I've already poo-poo'd the unemployment number. It's worthless.

But a sustained jobs growth rate of over 250,000 per month in the private sector is good, no matter how that's sliced. Get the jobs created, and the rest starts to take care of itself.

 

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Depends on how the jobs got created ... if it is actually private investment then that is good, if it is through federal subsides ( directly or indirectly) than its a bubble that cannot be sustained

 

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AA I heard this morning that they used a new method for calculating the unemployment numbers in January that will be used for the rest of the year. Did you hear anything about that? I'm going to pursue it later, don't have the time right now.

 

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My normal early AM hangout is a local all night coffee shop/diner.

I usually drop in there for an hour or two 3 or 4 nights a week. Lots of regulars there have been out of work for a long time 6 months, 8 months, a year, or even longer.

Over the past couple of months, many of them have been called back to work. This is a manufacturing area with lots of really huge industrial operations. I can't count the number of people who have told me that they got called back to work after a long lay off just in the past couple of months.

Decent jobs as well. Pay rates run from high teens/per hour and up with good benefits as well.

Something is happening. Not sure if it's going to stick around, but around here, times are getting MUCH better. You can see it. Stores and restaurants are busier, more cars on the street, late night used to be virtually deserted, now people are out, coming home from clubs and places in the city, everyone is noticing it. A lot of cops stop in the place and I spend a bit of time talking to them most nights I'm there. The number of drunks they pick up nightly has dropped off in a big way.

I hate to even hope, but maybe it's actually finally going to get better.