The United States economy gained momentum in January, adding 243,000 jobs, the second straight month of better-than-expected gains.
The unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent, giving a cause for optimism as the economy shapes up as the central issue in the presidential election. The Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of the job market uses a different survey, of households rather than employers, to calculate the unemployment rate.
The department also revised its estimate for new jobs in December slightly to 203,000. It originally reported that employers created a net gain of 200,000 jobs in December.
The January gains left more than 12.7 million people unemployed.
The promising jobs numbers came as various economic indicators have painted an ambivalent picture of the recovery’s strength.
Layoffs appear to be slowing as fewer people are filing for unemployment claims, and factory orders have picked up.
But while sales of existing homes have started to rise, home prices continue to fall. Consumer spending is still restrained, and could come under further pressure with oil prices edging higher over the last four months and as consumers revert to building up savings.
“It’s a steady grind in the right direction, but it’s a grind,” said Omair Sharif, United States economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. “You’re going to have a situation where you take a couple steps forward and a step backward.”
Long-term unemployment is one of the most crushing legacies of this recent recession. According to an analysis of December’s Labor Department numbers released earlier this week by the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative, nearly a third of the jobless have been unemployed for a year or more.
“You have an interesting situation where you have some permanent part-time workers,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo. “These people are in jobs and the jobs are not likely to become full-time.” He added: “That’s just a new flavor of the labor market.”
source: nytimes.com
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