January US Jobs Data Released

Job creation revived in January after an abrupt year-end slowdown, with employers adding 112,000 jobs last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday.

It was the job market's best performance since the economy started pulling out of recession in 2001. But the growth in employment was well under the 175,000 jobs expected by forecasters, and short of the 150,000 new jobs that economists consider necessary to absorb new entrants into the labor force.

The dollar fell on foreign exchange markets yesterday, and stock and Treasury bond prices rose sharply, indications that investors have concluded that the Federal Reserve is now less likely to raise interest rates soon.

The unemployment rate declined slightly in January, to 5.6 percent from 5.7 percent in December, the bureau said. The jobless rate has fallen from a peak of 6.3 percent in June.

The bureau lowered its prior estimate of the number of jobs created since last August, to 229,000 from 278,000. But it also raised its estimate of the number of new jobs in December, to 16,000 from the meager 1,000 that briefly served as a symbol of a jobless recovery.

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