US Unemployment Falls to 9% in January but Job Growth Slow

NY Times Graph

The BLS released its latest monthly report today and the news is mixed.  While unemployment in January fell to 9%, the monthly job growth number (36,000) was terrible.  In general, economists believe the economy need to add well over 100,000 jobs a month just to keep up with work force growth.  Yes, bad weather certainly played a big role in the disappointing jobs number, but even still the number is bad.

So once again we are repeating the same mantra: the economy is recovering but painfully slowly.