In the best showing in the past five months, the economy generated 227,000 seasonally adjusted, net new jobs in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly employment situation report released Friday. In the past 12 months, the economy has generated a net gain of 2.34 million jobs. January’s increase was well above what analysts had expected.
This is the final BLS jobs report of the Obama era. Surveyors completed their data gathering for it Jan. 12. There was no tweet from Pr*sident Trump congratulating his predecessor on the report. But there also wasn’t one claiming the BLS was presenting “fake news.”
Of the total for January, 237,000 new jobs were generated in the private-sector, while the public sector shed 10,000 jobs. The count includes both full-time and part-time positions.
The January gain marked the 76th consecutive month of overall job growth. The estimated number of jobs comes from the Current Employment Survey of 146,000 business establishments and government agencies. The BLS calculated the rate of unemployment—the one that appears in most headlines and that the bureau labels U3—at 4.8 percent for January. That rate is based on the results of the Current Population Survey of 60,000 households.
In addition to the headline unemployment rate, there is another—U6—which measures both unemployment and underemployment. It’s considered by many economists to be a better measure of job health than U3. One key U6 component comprises workers in part-time jobs who would like but cannot find full-time positions. U6 rose 0.2 points to 9.4 percent in January.
Nominal wages for private-sector workers were up over the 12-month period since January 2016 by 2.5 percent, slightly ahead of inflation. But that is weaker than the predicted 2.7 percent.
The BLS also revised its previous calculations for December from 156,000 jobs to 157,000 and in November from 204,000 to 164,000.
The civilian workforce in January rose by 76,000, after having risen by 184,000 in December. The labor force participation rate rose 0.2 points to 62.9 percent and the employment-population ratio also rose 0.2 points to 59.9 percent.
The BLS also calculates the employment-population ratio each month for Americans in the 25-54 age group. People in this cohort are the most likely of any adults to be employed, and their situation is a key indicator of the nation’s overall economic health. This age group reached its highest employment-population ratio of 84.6 percent in 1999. Its lowest—74.8 percent—came in November 2010. For January of this year, the rate remained unchanged for the third straight month at 78.2 percent.
Unemployment rates differ by race and sex. For U3: Adult men: 4.4 percent; Adult women: 4.4 percent; Whites: 4.3 percent; Blacks: 7.7 percent; Asians: 3.7 percent; Hispanics: 5.9 percent; American Indians: (not counted monthly; Teenagers: 15.0 percent; (for teenagers of color, the unemployment rate is usually much higher.)
The BLS has established a "confidence level" for its monthly estimates of plus or minus 105,000 jobs. This means the "real" number of new jobs created in January was not 227,000 but instead ranged between 122,000 and 332,000.
Hours & Wages:
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose 4 cents an hour to $21.84 in January.
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payrolls remained unchanged in January to at 34.4 hours.
• Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls rose 3 cents an hour in January to $26.00 after a 6-cent rise in December.
• The manufacturing workweek in January rose by 0.1 hour to 40.8 hours.
• The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private non-farm payrolls in January remained unchanged at 33.6 hours.
Job gains and losses in January for selected categories:
- Professional services: 39,000
- Temporary help services: 14,800
- Transportation & warehousing: -4,000
- Financial activities: 32,000
- Leisure & hospitality: 34,000
- Information: 3,000
- Education and health services: 24,000
- Health care & social assistance: 32,100
- Retail trade: 45,900
- Construction: 36,000
- Manufacturing: 5,000
- Mining and Logging: 4,000
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in the previous 10 years compared with this January’s gain of 000,000.
January 2007: + 240,000
January 2008: + 19,000
January 2009: - 791,000
January 2010: + 28,000
January 2011: + 42,000
January 2012: + 338,000
January 2013: + 190,000
January 2014: + 187,000
January 2015: + 221,000
January 2016: + 168,000