WASHINGTON
The outlook for jobs became a bit less bleak with January's unexpected decline in the unemployment rate, which fell to 9.7 percent from 10 percent.
Still, yesterday's unemployment report showed just how deep the job crisis remains: 8.4 million jobs vanished in the Great Recession. Economists say that the nation would be lucky to get back 1.5 million jobs this year. And they say it will take at least three to four years for the job market to return to anything like normal.
The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since August. A Labor Department survey of households found that 541,000 more Americans had jobs last month.
But those gains resulted from seasonal adjustments to the data. Without those adjustments, the data show fewer people had jobs last month.
Such adjustments are made each month and are especially large in January because of heavy seasonal changes in hiring, according to Tom Nardone, an assistant commissioner at the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A separate survey of businesses found that employers shed 20,000 jobs last month. That was worse than the 5,000 gain analysts expected.
January's report did offer hope that employers may start adding jobs soon. Excluding the beleaguered construction industry, the private sector as a whole added 63,000 positions.
John Silvia, the chief economist at Wells Fargo, said that the drop in the unemployment rate wasn't a result of a shrinking labor force, which has held the rate down in previous months.
"It simply was, people found jobs," he said. The report is "consistent with continued improvement in the labor market."
Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, noted that the economy has been growing for six months, yet company payrolls are still shrinking.
"Based on what we've seen so far, we think it is fair to characterize this as another jobless recovery," Ashworth said.
President Obama said that the unexpected drop in the unemployment rate was "cause for hope but not celebration."
Speaking at a small business in a Washington suburb, Obama said that the figures show modest progress but cautioned that the data will continue to fluctuate for months.
Seasonal adjustments tend to have a big effect on the January employment data. Retailers typically lay off temporary employees who were hired over the holidays. Construction companies temporarily cut jobs as work stops because of cold weather. The data are adjusted to account for such factors so the figures will illustrate underlying trends.
The department uses separate surveys of households and businesses to measure employment. The two differed this month. Households showed a large jump in employment. But businesses reported a 20,000 drop in jobs. Over time, the two surveys generally track each other.
The household survey is more volatile than the business survey, Nardone said, and often shows large swings. In December, it reported a 589,000 drop in employment.
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