Unemployment Rate: 6.6%; Employment Report A Huge Disappointment; Two Consecutive Reports That Dispel "The Theory" The US Economy Is Improving

Say what? A screenshot from Yahoo!News -- the sub-headline must have been phoned in by the Obama administration (my hunch is that the headline was written yesterday in anticipation of today's job report based on forecasts):

Cut to the chase:

• any number less than 200,000 indicates economic stagnation
• in 2013, not a particularly good year, average monthly job gain: 183,000 (economic stagnation)
• December, 2013: 75,000 (horrendous)
• January, 2014: 113,000 (more horrendous; expectation was for 180,000 jobs) 

The story:

The report was so bad, so unimpressive, the story was not even a headline story by 8:44 a.m. the day it was released.

In fact, I had trouble finding the story at Yahoo!Finance; it was tied to the US Treasuries story:

Treasuries rose after U.S. employers added fewer jobs than forecast for a second month in January, adding to speculation that growth in the world’s biggest economy may be faltering.

Ten-year note yields fell for the first time in four days. The Federal Reserve has reduced its monthly bond purchases under the quantitative-easing stimulus strategy to $65 billion over the past two months from 2013’s $85 billion, citing an improving economy.

“That’s a tough pill to swallow because the consensus view was that the U.S. economy was finally getting on a stronger path of growth,” said Gary Pollack, who manages $12 billion as head of fixed-income trading at Deutsche Bank AG’s Private Wealth Management unit in New York. “We’ve had two employment reports in a row which dispel that theory.”

The 10-year yield sank as much as seven basis points, or 0.07 percentage point, to 2.63 percent before trading at 2.68 percent at 8:56 a.m. in New York, down two basis points, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. It pared its first weekly increase this year to four basis points.

Great news for homebuyers.

Great news for investors. The recent tapering was a "legacy" move for Ben Bernanke -- the history books will report that he saved the US economy and began tapering before his term was up. It's going to take a brave, brave (and irresponsible?) Fed to continue tapering. So, great news for investors

Not so good for President Obama and company. But I doubt he has ever seen an unemployment report he didn't like.

You have to go deep into the story to get the number:

The 113,000-job gain in employment followed a revised 75,000 increase in December, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. U.S. employers added an average of 182,170 jobs a month in 2013. The median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey called for a 180,000 advance in January. The unemployment rate dropped to the lowest level since October 2008 even as more Americans entered the labor force.