The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its employment numbers for January. It is a mixed report: the official unemployment rate fell from 10.0% to 9.7%, yet the economy lost 20,000 non-farm jobs. This means that the decline in the rate of unemployment has to do with people who aren't (fully) employed but aren't counted as unemployed (i.e. they have become discouraged or marginally attached). The BLS also revised upward its estimate of the number of jobs that were lost in Dec. 2009, from 80,000 up to 150,000. Here are the basics from the BLS:
Read the full report.