January 2017 employment: US adds 227,000 jobs

The Employment Situation‘ report released by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States remained quite steady at 4.8%, while the economy added 227,000 jobs, in January. Both the number of unemployed persons, at 7.6 million, and the unemployment rate, at 4.8 percent, were closely aligned with the numbers from the previous month. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Asians (3.7 percent) increased in January. The jobless rates for adult men (4.4 percent), adult women (4.4 percent), teenagers (15.0 percent), Whites (4.3 percent), Blacks (7.7 percent), and Hispanics (5.9 percent) showed little or no change over the month. In January, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 1.9 million and accounted for 24.4 percent of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployed has declined by 244,000. The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised down from +204,000 to +164,000, and the change for December was revised up from +156,000 to +157,000. With these revisions, employment gains in November and December combined were 39,000 lower than previously reported.]]>