Manufacturing added 11,000 jobs in January, the first monthly increase since November 2007, while factories saw a modest increased in the length of the workweek. Temporary workers grew by 52,000, and the overall American workweek lengthened, reinforcing the view that commercial activity is awakening after more than two years of veritable hibernation.
“It does signal that the economy is continuing to improve,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, N.C. “You don’t have a boom, but you have an economic recovery. It’s a positive sign.”
Yet despite the hopeful indications, the government’s monthly snapshot of the labor market came wrapped in an unusual degree of statistical uncertainty, economists said, intensifying the debate about the staying power and vigor of the apparent economic recovery.
The Labor Department revised past data to show that the economy comprised 1.36 million fewer jobs in December than previously thought. The revisions showed the economy lost 150,000 jobs in December — far more than the 85,000 initially reported.
The report also featured a new way in which the government estimates the population, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate. That prompted some economists to dismiss the drop in joblessness as a statistical quirk. ...
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