Friday’s Employment Situation report from the U.S. Department of Labor gave ammunition for the bulls and bears, and for the hawks and doves. All in all, it was positive, just less positive in some aspects and more positive in others.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics now says that the official unemployment rate was 4.9% in January, below 5% for the first time since 2008. Bloomberg and Dow Jones were both calling for a 5.0% reading, which would have matched prior months.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 151,000 in January. Bloomberg was calling for 188,000 and ADP had set a stronger expectation than that figure. The prior month (December) was revised to 262,000 from the preliminary 292,000. What stands out here was that all economists were too rosy — the Econoday range was 170,000 to 215,000.

Private sector payrolls came in at 158,000 in January. Bloomberg predicted 180,000, with an Econoday range of 160,000 to 206,000. The December report was revised lower to 251,000 from 275,000.

The labor force participation rate rose to 62.7% from 62.6%. But where the big jump was seen was in average hourly earnings. Workers saw wages rise 0.5%, versus a 0.3% expectation by Bloomberg. This was flat at 0.0% in December.

The average work week was 34.6 hours in January, just over the 34.5 hours expected by Bloomberg and up from 34.5 hours in December.

Again, the report was positive but had many exceptions. Other key issues as follows:

• The number of unemployed persons was little changed at 7.8 million.
• The long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks or more) was at 2.1 million and accounted for 26.9% of the unemployed.
• Those employed part time for economic reasons (involuntary part-time workers) was 6.0 million in January but was down by 796,000 over the year.
• Some 2.1 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, little different from a year earlier.

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