By One Measure, This Was A Stupendous Jobs Report

The Non-Farm Payrolls report just came out, and it was a big miss.

Just 113,000 new jobs were created in January vs. 180,000 expected.

But there are two parts to every jobs report.

One is the Establishment Survey, where they ask businesses how many people they hired in the month. That's where the 113,000 number came from.

But the other part is the Household Survey, where they ask households whether they gained/lost jobs in the month.

And that side of this report was amazing.

From the report:

After accounting for the annual adjustment to the population controls, the civilian labor force rose by 499,000 in January, and the labor force participation rate edged up to 63.0 percent. Total employment, as measured by the household survey, increased by 616,000 over the month, and the employment-population ratio increased by 0.2 percentage point to 58.8 percent.

Got that? Households reported 616,000 new jobs in the month, and the participation rate rose. And unemployment fell from 6.7% to 6.6%. And the unemployment rate for those with only a high school education fell from 7.1% to 6.5% in one month!

So you have to take all of the data. According to establishments, January was pretty meh. According to households, it was a great month.