Somewhere, early this morning, I heard some sourpuss quoted as saying Obama was expecting something in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million new jobs in the upcoming jobs report, and wasn't he an ******* for that crazy prediction! 130,000 would be more like it...
130,000?
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 jobs market uses a different survey, of households rather than employers, to calculate the unemployment rate.
Measured by both the unemployment rate and the number of jobless — which fell to 12,758,000 — it was the strongest signal yet that an economic recovery was spreading to the jobs market. The last time the figures were as good was February 2009, President Obama’s first full month in office.
The report sent stock-index futures up sharply on Wall Street before the opening bell. ...NYT
