Strong Job Growth in January

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released data on the January employment situation.
Highlights of today’s employment situation report:
– 193,000 new jobs were added to employers’ payrolls in January.
– A broad spectrum of industries experienced job growth, including construction, mining, health care, and financial services.
– The January unemployment rate (calculated from the household survey of employment) was 4.7%, the lowest rate since July 2001.
– Approximately 1.2 million persons age 16 and over had evacuated from where they were living in August due to Hurricane Katrina. About 600,000 of the evacuees had returned home. Of all evacuees identified, 56.8 percent were in the labor force in January. The employment-population ratio for these evacuees was 48.4 percent. The unemployment rate for persons identified as evacuees was 14.7 percent; it was much higher for evacuees who had not returned home (26.3 percent) than for those who had returned home (2.9 percent).
– The number of discouraged workers (those who would like to work but who are not currently looking because they believe no prospects are available) was 396,000 in January, down by 119,000 from a year earlier.