Last updated on February 9th, 2013 at 08:58 am
The long awaited job numbers came out today and exceeded expectations! Total non-farm employment increased by 227,000, which is big, but the biggest kicker is the upward revisions of December and January.
The original report for December was 203,000 and that was revised up to 223,000. January was originally reported as 243,000 and that has been revised up to 284,000. This is really great. The only downside is the unemployment didn’t tick down. It is holding steady at 8.3%
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Here is the break down per sector:
Health care and social assistance employment rose by 61,000 over the month. Within health care, ambulatory care services added 28,000 jobs, and hospital employment increased by 15,000. Over the past 12 months, health care employment has risen by 360,000.
Ok, as always, I say to our conservative friends who told us ObamaCare was too much regulation: How is it that 360,000 jobs were created in an industry directly impacted and regulated by this law?
Manufacturing employment rose by 31,000 in February. All of the increase occurred in durable goods manufacturing, with job gains in fabricated metal products (+11,000), transportation equipment (+8,000), machinery (+5,000), and furniture and related
products (+3,000). Durable goods manufacturing has added 444,000 jobs since a recent trough in January 2010.
This is making the GOP’s head explode, which is why they are reverting to social issues like abortion and birtherism. If they focused on the economy, well, it would shed light on its improvement.
Source: United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
