The Obama Boom received a boost in January. 243,000 jobs were created in January. There’s no way to spin this as this is actually a  decent number. What this is due to, I can’t scratch my head. Housing is weak, consumer spending is mediocre, wages are stagnant and gas prices have increased. This job growth number is really baffling. What is causing this uptick in hiring? However, there is a caveat. The unemployment rate fell, because the labor force participation rate is at a 30 year low of 63.7%! Something is not jiving here.

The pace of job creation surged in January, with the US economy generating 243,000 new positions while the unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent, according to government data released Friday.

Both numbers were far better than consensus, which expected a growth of 150,000 jobs and a steady unemployment rate of 8.5 percent.

The stock market opened sharply higher on the jobs news, with gains nearly 1 percent, while bond yields surged as well to push the benchmark 10-year Treasury to 1.93 percent.

“What’s not to like about the report?” said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak in New York. “Not only did payrolls exceed forecasts of 140,000 by 103,000 but between the November and December revisions employers added 160,000 more jobs than first thought.”

[….]

The closely watched labor-force participation number, which can skew the unemployment rate, fell to 63.7 percent, the lowest since May 1983. The number of those working part-time for economic reasons rose 1.2 percent.

The media is celebrating and eating these numbers up. This is teh first time, anemic economic growth is producing decent job gains. What’s going on here? I’m really baffled, since the Obama Boom is breaking all economic rules.

The good news is, more Americans are working. The bad news is that if this pace of job growth continues, the False Messiah will get re-elected.

****COLDWARRIOR update. I went and played around at the BLS with their numbers and made this graph:

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

Series Id:           LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title:        (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force status:  Civilian labor force participation rate
Type of data:        Percent or rate
Age:                 16 years and over

Do not the upswing after 1966, that is women entering the workforce. As you can see, we have been falling since 2002 and are really heading downhill now. This captures the real unemployment numbers as it is everyone from age 16 to 65.

Labor force participation rate

The labor force as a percent of the civilian noninstitutional population.

It’s called shrinkage, everyone…our economy has shrunk to spring 1983. We just lost 30 years.