More Mixed Jobs News

As has often happened with the recent jobs numbers, Friday's report on unemployment had some mixed figures in it. A disappointing 36,000 jobs were added during the month of January, when some prognosticators had hopes that the number would exceed six figures. But at the same time, the unemployment rate dropped significantly, from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent.

In the past, the primary cause for this type of discrepancy has been a number of people leaving the work force, which drops the official unemployment rate even though fewer people are really at work. But that's not the entire issue this month. Even though the new number of jobs added was small, there were other changes that made this report a little more positive. For one thing, the number of new jobs that had been added in December was revised upward. For another, the growth continues to be almost entirely in the private sector; over the past 12 months, nearly a million private-sector jobs have been added.

To be sure, we will need to add more than 36,000 jobs per month to get the economy to full strength. Still, January's job news wasn't all bad.