National Employment Situation, January 2024

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 353,000 in January 2024 from December 2023. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent.

The news release from Bureau of Labor Statistics, may be found here. My interactive visualization of this material is at Current Employment Statistics.

The primary results reported are:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 353,000 in January, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, retail trade, and social assistance. Employment declined in the mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction industry.

Other important numbers, quoting from BLS:

• The unemployment rate was 3.7 percent for the third month in a row, and the number of unemployed people was little changed at 6.1 million.

• Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.6 percent), adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (10.6 percent), Whites (3.4 percent), Blacks (5.3 percent), Asians (2.9 percent), and Hispanics (5.0 percent) showed little or no change in January.

• The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 1.3 million, was little changed in January. The long-term unemployed accounted for 20.8 percent of all unemployed people.

• The labor force participation rate, at 62.5 percent, was unchanged in January, and the employment-population ratio, at 60.2 percent, was little changed.

• In January, the number of people employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.4 million, changed little.

• The number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job, at 5.8 million, was little changed in January.

BLS reports that previous data was revised upward:

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised up by 9,000, from +173,000 to +182,000, and the change for December was revised up by 117,000, from +216,000 to +333,000. With these revisions, employment in November and December combined is 126,000 higher than previously reported.

Following, some charts taken from the visualization. Click charts for larger versions.