The Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for January 2012 nearly doubled the expectations of financial experts. The report was released Friday and stated that in the month of January, the United States added 243,000 jobs, much more than the predicted addition of 155,000 jobs.
Not only is this an increase from the expected numbers, but it’s also up from December’s figures where there were 203,000 added to the market. To go along with this increase in jobs creation, the unemployment rate also dropped to 8.3 percent. It was expected to remain the same and although it is only a small drop from the 8.5 percent rate of December, any drop is welcomed. As a result of the slightly improved job market, the stock markets also increased with the Dow Jones going up 115 points. Nasdaq went up about 27 points and S&P 500 about 13 points.
This is great news for the market and the country in general. With numbers expected to remain stagnant, any increase is noted and doubly welcomed. Furthermore, this helps to facilitate optimism and perhaps motivate more consumer spending. As Spark News reported earlier, the number of unemployment benefit applications has also decreased suggesting less people need the government assistance and are finding jobs more easily. The BLS jobs report only works to prove this prediction that was made earlier in the week.
Although it seems that we have started to get the ball really rolling on jobs recovery, it is known that we still have a bit of a ways to go. With this January jobs report, total nonfarm payroll employment now stands at 132.4 million. This is still about 5.6 million less than the 138 million jobs we had in January 2008. The figures prove that we still have a lot of improvements to make, but for now we can take joy in the fact that the markets seem to be slowly but surely picking up.
SOURCE: Huffington Post
IMAGE: Courtesy of G7 Finance
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