Somehow, Some Way, Unemployment 9.7%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 5, 8:53AM EST

Many have said that the math from the US Labor Department is fuzzy, and today will only show further conversations of that notion. Despite the negative recent news in weekly jobless claims, the unemployment rate came in 9.7%… Bloomberg and Dow Jones were at 10.1% for expectations. The change in non-Farm payrolls was -20,000 versus expectations of a flat number.

The figures were boosted by what is described as temporary hiring. The rate of the under-employed also fell to 16.5% from 17.3%. The losses were in construction, transportation and warehouse jobs, and the gains were in retail and temporary help services.

The average hourly earnings rose to $18.89 from $18.84 a month earlier, while the average workweek was up 0.1 hour to 33.3 hours in January.

The annual revisions, which take place each February of each year,show that job losses were almost 600,000 more than what had been previously reported in 2009.

A drop shows a continued ‘opting out of the workforce’ in the numbers…. something we’ll be reviewing further.

JON C. OGG

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.