The Labor Department reported nonfarm payrolls rose by just 36,000 in January while the unemployment rate fell from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent, the lowest level since April of 2009.

Though hiring in the manufacturing sector was quite strong, the nonfarm payrolls gain was disappointing, well below the consensus estimate of 140,000.

The drop in the jobless rate was a pleasant surprise was also disappointing as it was due largely to more workers finding jobs leaving the rather than a shrinking labor force. The broader U-6 measure of unemployment, including those who have stopped looking for work and those settling for part-time work, fell from 16.7 percent to 16.1 percent.

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More than 14 percent of the U.S. population, a whopping 43,595,794 Americans, are now receiving food stamps and this entry over at the WSJ Economics blog has a sortable table that allows you to see how your state is doing relative to all the others.

It’s sorted by the third column above and I’m a little surprised about Oregon being fourth, having lived there less than a year ago. Sorted the other way, by smallest percent of the population on food stamps, our new home of Montana ranks 18th, just behind Nevada (?), and, surprisingly, California ranks just 8th at less than 10 percent. Apparently there’s not much of a correlation between unemployment and food stamp usage since Nevada and California rank 1st and 2nd, respectively, in joblessness at 14.5 percent and 12.5 percent.

In today’s commentary at Bloomberg, Caroline Baum details the surge in job creation recently appearing in the econometric models used by the government and its central bank, lamenting the disconnect between said models and job creation in the real world.

Just when you thought you’d heard the last of “jobs created or saved,” the Obama administration’s quarterly report card on its $814 billion fiscal stimulus, along comes the Federal Reserve with its own model-derived guesstimates.

The Fed’s full menu of securities purchases, starting with $1.7 trillion of Treasuries, agency and mortgage-backed bonds in late 2008 and 2009 and including the current $600 billion of intermediate- and long-term Treasuries, “will have raised private payroll employment by about 3 million jobs,” said Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen.

You’d think unemployed and underemployed workers would be ecstatic. Instead, 46.8 percent of consumers surveyed by the Conference Board said jobs were “hard to get” in December, down slightly from the peak reading of 49.4 percent in 2009.

With fiscal policy saving or creating 3.5 million jobs and monetary policy manufacturing another 3 million, why, the U.S. could be at full employment in no time!

The economy lost 8.5 million private-sector jobs from December 2007 to December 2009, recouping 1.3 million since then, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One could argue that, without the fiscal stimulus and money printing, we’d have lost far more than the 8.5 million jobs in recent years, however, one could also argue that job gains produced only by models are just silly and that, as Caroline notes, the White House and the Fed should “leave fantasy forecasts to the elves”.

The Labor Department reports nonfarm payroll employment rose much less than expected in December, an increase of 103,000 after an upwardly revised gain of 71,000 in November, and the unemployment rate fell from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent, a 20-month low.

The disappointing payroll gains last month were offset by total upward revisions of  70,000 in October and November, however, the December total came in well below consensus estimates of between 150,000 and 200,000, a forecast that was raised after ADP reported an increase of 297,000 in private sector payrolls on Wednesday. In the Labor Department’s report today, the private sector was seen creating only 113,000 new jobs last month.

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