Reuters: the decline in the jobless rate was not a matter of discouraged workers dropping out

[dennis4868]

The job market looks quite different depending on which of the two Labor Department surveys you read. The headline figure showing a paltry January jobs gain of 36,000 was skewed by winter weather that kept an estimated 886,000 people from working, according to a Labor Department official.

But the unemployment rate, which is drawn from a survey of households rather than business establishments, dropped to 9.0 percent from 9.4 percent in December, the lowest level since April 2009 and down nearly a full percentage point in the span of two months.

WHAT GIVES?

* January employment reports are typically tricky to interpret because the Labor Department makes adjustments to its population counts, which means comparisons to December are not always apples-to-apples when looking at the data from the department's household survey. However, the agency said the labor force count did not change this time.

* Smoothed to take into account the change in the population count, the household survey showed the number of people reporting they were employed jumped by 589,000, and the number unemployed fell by 590,000.

* That means the decline in the jobless rate was not a matter of discouraged workers dropping out, something that had been a significant factor in previous months, but rather fully a sign of labor-market strength.

The entire article is here...http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-usa-economy-jobs-idUSTRE71337H20110204

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