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Eric D. Schwerin
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> http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/economy-adds-257k-jobs-in-january-114960.html?hp=r1_3 <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/economy-adds-257k-jobs-in-january-114960.html?hp=r1_3>
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> Banner jobs year gets even bigger
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> AP Photo
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> Banner jobs year gets even bigger
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> By Timothy Noah <http://www.politico.com/reporters/TimothyNoah.html>
> 2/6/15 8:59 AM EST
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> Updated 2/6/15 10:39 AM EST
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> Friday’s jobs report <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm> indicated substantially better job growth over the past several months than previously estimated, supporting the Obama administration’s claim of a now-robust economic recovery.
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> It was already known that more jobs were created in 2014 than any year since 1999, as unemployment fell from close to 7 percent to below 6 percent. The Obama administration seized upon job growth to shift its message <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/barack-obama-budget-114822.html> from austerity to middle-class growth in a budget proposal this week.
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> “America is poised for another strong year,” said <http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/02/06/employment-situation-january> Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, in a blog post, “and so it is critical to avoid brinksmanship and unnecessary austerity, and instead to make investments in our future growth.”
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> The Labor Department’s latest jobs report brightened that picture with its annual benchmark revisions for 2014. These showed 147,000 more jobs were created in November and December than previously reported.
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> The streak of growth continued, with the economy adding 257,000 jobs in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, up from December’s estimated increase of 252,000 jobs but down from a revised December estimate of 329,000. Taken together, the job growth for November through January was faster than for any three-month period since September-November 1997.
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> Even House Speaker John Boehner conceded <http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/speaker-boehner-january-2015-unemployment-report> that “it’s always good news that more Americans are finding work” before calling for restoration of the 40-hour work week in the Affordable Care Act, approving the Keystone XL pipeline and halting “the overregulation that shackles small businesses.”
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> The size of the labor force grew by over 700,000, according to the January report, and the labor force participation rate increased to 62.9 percent.
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> That’s still a historically low figure, and some Republicans continued to seize on it as a sign of a still-troubled economy.
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> “This report is welcome news,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said in a statement. “Still, this recovery is too fragile for far too many. And in the long-term unemployed there’s a lot of potential that we are still not tapping.”
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> Unemployment was 5.7 percent, a slight uptick from December’s 5.6 percent. The unemployment rate has not changed significantly since October.
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> The wages picture brightened, too. Average hourly private-sector earnings were up 12 cents, the largest one-month increase since the economic recovery began in 2009, and a great improvement over December’s 5-cent decline. From January 2014 through January 2015, average hourly wages were up a still-modest 2.2 percent.
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> “We are … seeing nominal wage growth exceed the latest inflation readings,” Furman said, “but additional steps are still needed to overcome the long-standing challenges affecting wages and family incomes.”
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> Furman cautioned that the average hourly earnings data was “one of several nominal earnings measures produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” and that other measures showed wage increases over the past year ranging from a 1.7 percent median increase for full-time workers to a 2.9 percent average increase for private production and non-supervisory workers. By all measures, however, the increase over the past year exceeded inflation.
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> Overall the economy grew 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter, a slowdown from the brisk 5 percent in the third quarter.
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> Analysts struggled to find any negative news in the report. “In short, more evidence that the labor market is recovering rapidly,” High Frequency Economics’ Jim O’Sullivan said in a research note. “Although unemployment edged up this month, the trend is clearly still down with the trend in employment growth now well over 200,000 per month.”
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> “It’s a great report,” Ed Keon, managing director and portfolio manager for Prudential Financial, told <http://www.cnbc.com/id/102401609>CNBC <http://www.cnbc.com/id/102401609>. “The labor force finally goes up, we got a little wage growth, a lot of upward revisions.
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> “We’re finally getting enough internal momentum that we can stay at that roughly 3 percent [GDP] growth rate,” Keon said, “maybe even a little higher as we go through the year.”
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> Ben White contributed to this report.
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