Edgar Su/Reuters
Economists consider a 5% rate to indicate full employment.
But while that number is accurate, it's imprecise.
Because of rounding.
The civilian labor force, which is made up of employed people and those looking for jobs, totaled 158.335 million in January. 7.791 million of those were unemployed.
So based on those numbers, the unemployment rate is actually closer to 4.92058%.
Back in December, there were 7.904 million unemployed Americans in a labor force of 157.833 million, which would make the unemployment rate about 5.0078%. (Although, again, the officially reported number was 5.0%.)
So that technically makes January's number a 0.08722 percentage point decrease from the previous month.