NATIONAL REPORT—U.S. employment rose by 225,000 in January, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 3.6%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Notable job gains occurred in construction, in healthcare, and in transportation and warehousing.
Both the unemployment rate, at 3.6%, and the number of unemployed persons, at 5.9 million, changed little in January. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3%), adult women (3.2%), teenagers (12.2%), Whites (3.1%), Blacks (6%), Asians (3%), and Hispanics (4.3%) showed little or no change over the month.
Among the unemployed, the number of reentrants to the labor force increased by 183,000 in January to 1.8 million but was little changed over the year. (Reentrants are persons who previously worked but were not in the labor force prior to beginning their job search.) The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 1.2 million, was unchanged in January. These individuals accounted for 19.9% of the unemployed.
After accounting for the annual adjustments to the population controls, the civilian labor force rose by 574,000 in January, and the labor force participation rate edged up by 0.2 percentage point to 63.4%. The employment-population ratio, at 61.2%, changed little over the month but was up by 0.5 percentage point over the year.