Labor Stats

For a change, there's a decent jobs report out fromt the BLS today. Job growth for January was 193,000, a good deal less than the concensus expectation of 250,000, but still a decent figure [notwithstanding the fact that it is less than the monthly average during the Clinton years]. Unemployment supposedly fell to 4.7%, but I don't believe that figure at all. The pool of permanently underemployed who have given up on the system and aren't in the stats is deep and wide. Hourly earnings also rose by a decent 0.4 percent during the month.