U.S. Adds 113,000 Jobs, in Latest Worrying Sign on Growth

The Wall Street Journal ^ | February 7, 2014 | Eric Morath And Josh Mitchell

[John W]

WASHINGTON—The labor market in January registered weak gains for the second straight month, a slowdown that could heighten fears about the economic recovery and may lead some to call on the Federal Reserve to reconsider its easy-money strategy.

U.S. payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 113,000 in January, the Labor Department said Friday. Job growth improved compared with December's gain, which was revised up by just 1,000 to 75,000, but was well below last year's average pace. The November increase was recast up by 33,000 to 274,000.

The unemployment rate, obtained through a separate survey, fell to 6.6% last month from 6.7% in December, the Labor Department said.

[Red in Blue PA]

What we need is Amnesty for illegals to add 15 million people to the mix. That is sure to help the unemployment rate/MEGA SARC

[familyop]

"350,000 new unemployment claims,"

That's from only one week.

"113,000 new hires"

That's from a month.

"and the unemployment rate drops 0.1

Reads like Pravda and Tass circa 1972. "

Agreed. Well said.

[newfreep]

Leftsism, by any of its brand names, always fails economically, culturally and morally. ALWAYS

[traderrob6]

You give only half the picture which makes all your conclusions on which it is based false.

Your graph is meaningless without taking into consideration job growth which has averaged 2 million created per year for the 40 years prior to 2008.

A job creation of 113,000/mon for a year would be 32% LESS jobs created than the historical average. That looms huge and an average unemployment claim number in the context of this employment figure bodes definitively ominous.

[NY.SS-Bar9]

My fault, I was reading the total jobs column.

The total for all sectors that lost employment is -52K for one month.

Still a heck of a lot different than 350K per week in new claims.

What am I missing?

[Conservative Gato]

The numbers may say slow growth but out here in the real world I’m not sure what’s growing

No kidding, we have more national chains and local businesses that have closed or are closing. How can anyone believe the government and democraps lies if they just look around what is happening around them. And we have a stupid media, full of democraps, that won't call anyone on it if fear it might harm their agenda. I truly hate our media.

CGato

[jiggyboy]

I really don’t think anything matters except that They want to just keep jamming everything higher with whatever counterfeit Fed money there is. Taper on, taper off, USD/JPY high, USD/JPY low, heavy POMO day, light POMO day, more jobs, fewer jobs, doesn’t matter. They have a script and a roadmap and They are going to stick to it. Today is one of three examples of something moving huge and then reversing just as hard and just as fast also for no reason, in the past week.

Just find two points before the open that make a rising trendline and that’s your guide to where They will be all day long, that’s what “investing” is these days.

[Justa]

"The average for the last 45 years is 363,000. Currently the 4WMA is 334,000 so this job environment is actually BETTER than average from an initial claims standpoint."

So you're saying the labor force has been the same for the last 45 years?

The better indicator of economic strength is the labor force participation rate.

I hope you're not a beliver in funemployment.

[Conservative Gato]

I see you posting a lot of government statistics here in this thread. How can anyone in their right mind, given all the lies from the government and democraps with 0bamacare, among other things, trust anything the government and democraps put out today?

Seriously?

CGato

[Justa]

You read the BI Kool-Aide?

Better yet:

[Wyatt's Torch]

I’ve mentioned numerous times (even multiple times in this thread) that the recovery is weak by historical standards. Doesn’t make the data false.

[Wyatt's Torch]

People who just claim the data is made up and don’t post anything to back up their claim or other facts to support their claims just cannot be reasoned with. Ignore what is right in front of you. That’s your prerogative.

[Wyatt's Torch]

What you are missing is the 350k claims are all part of the “churn”. As I mentioned, tens of thousands of people are hired and fired every day. Simplistically if you had this scenario:

Hired: 400,000
Fired: 350,000
Net: +50,000

The Initial Claims are the +350k and the NFP would be +50K. It’s not as simple as that because the data for each comes from different sources and survey’s but the concept is accurate.

[Wyatt's Torch]

Well I'll go ahead and solidify my reputation around here and comment that I've completely agreed with QE. It's the remedy when you are facing massive deflation. Yes DEflation. Bernanke was not going to make the same mistake the Fed did in the 1930's when they tightened too fast and set off the 37-38 recession.

[fhayek]

I question your upbeat assessment for jobless claims. The average, through all economies is 363,000, but that includes some nasty weeks in the 600,000's. I bet that the average weekly initial jobless claims in growing economies is considerably lower than that.

[traderrob6]

Don’t mean to be on your case but your initial conjecture for which I was responding stated:

these figures (unemployment claims/jobs added) were “well within normal range for a growing economy.”

Taken in context of claims/jobs added it most deinately IS NOT.

[Conservative Gato]

You sound like a true statist. That’s where all the lies lead to is belief and preservation of big government which I am opposed. You can trust your statistics all you want coming from government, which is really made up of big government democraps and repubs, hell bent on preserving their big government and power through lies and deception.

But continue to trust them.

CGato

[Wyatt's Torch]

Okay. That’s fair.

[Wyatt's Torch]

“You sound like a true statist’

LMFAO! Hilarious!

[Conservative Gato]

When the government and democraps continue to lie to us and yet you still trust the info they put out, it’s your posts that are laughable, statist.

CGato