- The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 6.3% in January, while nonfarm payroll employment changed little, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The labor market continued to reflect the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. In January, notable job gains in professional and business services and in both public and private education were offset by losses in leisure and hospitality, in retail trade, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.
- Total non-farm payroll employment increased 49 thousand in January, following a decrease of 227 thousand in the previous month. Private-sector payrolls increased by 6 thousand in January, while government employment increased by 43 thousand. In January, notable job gains in professional and business services and in both public and private education were offset by losses in leisure and hospitality, in retail trade, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.
- The unemployment rate decreased to 6.3% in January, from 6.7% in December; and the number of unemployed persons decreased by 606 thousand to 10.130 million. A year earlier, the jobless rate was 3.5%, and the number of unemployed persons was 5.796 million
- The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 67 thousand to 4.023 million and accounted for 39.5% of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployed increased by 2.860 million.
- The labor force participation was 61.4% in January, little changed from the previous month, but was 1.9 percentage points lower than its February 2020 level.
- The average workweek of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 0.3 hours to 35.0 hours in January.
- In January, average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 6 cents to $29.96. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings were up 5.4%.
- The advance figure for initial claims for unemployment insurance decreased 33 thousand to 779 thousand in the week ending January 30. The 4-week moving average was 848.25 thousand, a decrease of 1.25 thousand from the previous week’s revised average. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment (ongoing) during the week ending January 23 was 4,592 thousand, a decrease of 193 thousand from the previous week’s revised level. The 4-week moving average was 4,881.75 thousand, a decrease of 120 thousand from the previous week’s revised average. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.2% for the week ending January 23, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the previous week’s revised rate.
- There were 106,227,670 COVID-19 confirmed cases in the world, 2,318,696 deaths, and 59,250,298 recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University, Coronavirus Resource Center (access date and time: 2/8/2021, 07:23 EST). In the United States, there were 27,008,565 confirmed cases, 463,482 deaths, and no figure for recovered cases. There are recovered figures for US states, but not for the US (some states, including California, do not report it so there is no figure for the country). The real problem is that the global figure has “zero” for the US, which also makes global “recovered” figures wrong. It should be noted that there are other countries not reporting the figures for the “recovered”, the most common reason being not enough follow ups after they are discharged from the hospital. There is a significant drop in the number of recovered for the world. It was 46,857,548 on 12/12/2020 in the World and 6,246,605 in the US. These are among the well-known data issues. The world is still struggling to control the spread of the virus.
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