Thread by @bencasselman

The U.S. economy added 49,000 jobs in January, a modest rebound from December's decline but still a much slower pace of growth than over the summer.
The unemployment rate fell to 6.3%.
nytimes.com/live/2021/02/0…

Revisions make December's decline look worse, now down 227k jobs. November also revised down.

We're still down nearly 10 million jobs from the pre-pandemic peak, and we gained essentially no jobs in January. We're barely even climbing out of the hole right ow.

In December, the weakness was concentrated in leisure & hospitality -- a clear "pandemic effect." This month, the slowdown is much more broad-based. In fact, despite the small headline gain, more industries cut jobs in January than added them.

BLS notes that the gain in state and local government jobs (as well as private education jobs) was at least partly driven by distortions in seasonal patterns. Without that, we might have had a second month of net job losses.

4 million people have now been unemployed for more than six months (a figure that almost certainly understates the true total). That 40% of all unemployed workers, and 4x the number before the pandemic.
nytimes.com/live/2021/02/0…

The household survey is tough to interpret this month, in part because the annual introduction of new population controls makes month-to-month comparisons difficult. But taking the numbers at face value, both temporary and permanent layoffs fell in January.