According to recent statistics, January was a good month for the US economy, although the unemployment rate was 5.7%, compared to how the situation looked like some decades ago.
The reports show the there were approximately 257,000 new jobs added. The reports were released by the Labor Department.
The figures exceeded what the economists expected to see this month. They were hoping for about 234,000 new added jobs.
This is the 11th straight month that the labor market more than 200,000 jobs, which marks it as the first time this happens in more than two decades.
Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR Inc., wrote that these are very promising results, especially for January, which usually proves to be very disappointing in terms of new jobs added.
Also, the months of November and December of 2014 looked promising. In November, there were more than 423,000 jobs added, which has not happened since May 2010.
Although there were many new jobs added, the unemployment rate did go up, from 5.6% to 5.7%.
According to economist Chris Williamson, this happened because there was an increase in “labor force participation”. Williamson writes that the participation rate has gone up from 62.7% to 62.9%, which means that more people are getting jobs, and the overall US economy is improving.
The fact that more Americans have jobs or are actively looking for one could mean that the economy is slowly but surely recovering, according to experts.
The number of jobs added has gone up in the past year, but according to statistics, there are still plenty of Americans who are not looking for work. This proportion has not been this high in almost forty years.
Economists explain that when the unemployment rate goes down, it means that more people have given up on finding jobs.
The figures reveal that currently there are more than 30 million Americans who are either out of jobs or are gravely underemployed.
Diane Lim, an economist for the Committee for Economic Development, said that even if the job market is improving, the high unemployment rate is not very good news.
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