Saturday Morning -- ObamaCare Already Curbing Hiring; Weakest Two-Month Stretch Of Job Creation In Three Years; Janet Is Burning The Midnight Oil Studying The Data

The Wall Street Journal

The very first story, the front-page headline story: slow jobs growth stirs worry. I pointed that out immediately after the numbers were released. The AP and Reuters both tried to ignore the story, or play it down. The Atlantic Monthly pointed out, again, that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, or something like that -- a reader noted that; sent it in. The reader noted the government had the market on all three.

So, now The WSJ says the same thing. This is not Fox News, but the #1 newspaper in the United States reporting the story (I believe the WSJ is bigger than USA Today, but could be wrong).

A hiring chill hit the U.S. labor market for the second straight month in January, reflecting employers' reluctance to take on new workers despite some of the nation's strongest economic growth in years. U.S. payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 113,000 in January after December's lackluster gain of 75,000 jobs, marking the weakest two-month stretch of job creation in three years, the Labor Department said Friday.

The soft hiring numbers join a recent cavalcade of mixed economic data on exports, housing and manufacturing. These trends, coupled with worries about emerging markets, have unsettled investors and stoked doubts about a stronger global recovery.

The latest data suggest weather may have slowed hiring in December, but not in January. A Labor Department analyst said last month's weather effects were consistent with other Januarys, a month that tends to be cold and snowy.

The health law has curbed hiring at Pita Pit USA Inc.'s 220 sandwich shops, said Peter Riggs, a vice president at the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, firm. "We're not quite sure what the unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act will be," he said. "We have an ongoing commitment to the people we've already hired, but we're more wary than in the past about hiring too many new people."