The nation's unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent in January -- breaking below the 10 percent mark from December -- but the economy still lost 20,000 jobs, a sign that the economy is still struggling to create jobs.
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The nation's unemployment rate fell below 10 percent in January - dipping to 9.7 percent even as the economy continued to shed jobs.
The economy lost 20,000 jobs last month, evidence that signs of economic growth are still not leading employers to bring on new workers quickly.
But the dip in unemployment rate below the psychologically significant double-digit mark was surely welcome news at the White House, where President Barack Obama has declared that creating jobs is his Number One priority for 2010. The closely watched unemployment rate went above 10 percent in October.
Obama plans to meet with small business owners today at 12:10 p.m., and he will talk about the new job numbers at 12:30 pm.
Now the White House will be watching whether new numbers will blunt the dramatic drop in stock
prices that began Thursday on Wall Street and continued overnight in the Asian markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped below the important 10,000 threshold for a time in late trading Thursday, but struggled back above the mark to finish at 10002.18. That represented a 2.6 percent decline on the day.
Market watchers say today's number will likely impact that global market trend, as analysts look for any evidence that growth in U.S. gross domestic product is translating into jobs that will help Americans begin to recover their financial footing.
But the monthly jobs report number has also become something of a political ritual in Washington, too in which journalists and political operatives huddle around computer screens watching for the 8:30 a.m. Release of the new figures, in order to understand the political dynamic of the coming month.
The dip in the unemployment rate gives Democrats an opportunity to say that their economic policies are taking effect. But 14.8 million people are still out of work in the United States.
In late January, government figures showed that the US economy had grown at a blistering 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, the fastest rate in six years. But the number left some economists scratching their heads, wondering how the economy could grow at such a rate without showing dramatic jobs growth.
The White House had publicly worried that employers had learned during the recession to do more with fewer workers and use technology to get more productivity out of their existing workforces.
