Jobs Report: The Great Thaw Begins

(MoneyWatch)  The January Employment report is out and it was a mixed bag. Still, the big take-away is that the employment deep-freeze of the past two years is finally starting to thaw.


Everyone will focus on the 9.7% unemployment rate--please try to ignore this particular factoid, because it can be a statistical sleight of hand based on two separate surveys (the rate comes from the household survey) and monthly job gains/losses come from the payroll survey.)

Here's the yin and yang of the jobs story:

• The US economy lost 20,000 non-farm jobs in January, which isn't a terrible number (unless you were one of the 20,000)
• I liked that average earnings and the average work week were up, but was disheartened to learn that the total tally for jobs lost during the recession shot up to 8.4 million from 7.2 million, after the annual benchmark update was announced
• Construction continue to hemorrhage, with an additional 75,000 positions eliminated, but manufacturing seems to be steadying, adding 11,000, the first month of job creation for the sector since November, 2007
• Temporary jobs added 52,000--temp jobs are seen as a leading indicator for future full-time jobs
• The average duration of unemployment rose to 30.2 weeks from 29.1, but the broader unemployment rate dropped from 17.3% to 16.5%

I know we're still in the middle of winter--and as I write, a big storm is heading up the East coast. But on the jobs front, the Great Thaw is beginning.

Image by Flickr User Maschineraum, CC 2.0