Reply #9: Payrolls grow below forecast [View All]

[ozymandius]

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. employers added thousands of jobs to their payrolls in January, the government said Friday, but the number again fell short of Wall Street forecasts.

Payrolls outside the farm sector grew by 112,000 jobs, the Labor Department said, compared with an upwardly revised gain of 16,000 in December. It was the sixth straight month of payroll gains. The unemployment rate fell to 5.6 percent from 5.7 percent in December.

Economists, on average, expected 165,000 new jobs and unemployment at 5.7 percent, according to Briefing.com.

"Two and a half years into this recovery, and the economy can only muster up 112,000 new jobs?" said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research. "That's a bad number, not a good number."

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