Strike up the band. Break out the confetti. The market’s going to love this. The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent and non-farm jobs grew by 243,000 in January.

This morning’s monthly report from the U.S. Department of Labor blasted through even the most optimistic of expectations. The jobs gain would have been the largest since May 2010, except that the Labor Department’s data group adjusted 2011′s jobs numbers. Now, only March (+246,000) and April (+251,000) had stronger numbers.

January is the second consecutive month to beat estimates. Economists predicted anywhere from MarketWatch’s tepid 121,000 to the more optimistic 182,000 in the Bloomberg survey. None of the widely reported surveys saw a decline in the unemployment rate.

Indeed, the unemployment rate, which has been declining very slowly since hitting a peak of 10.1 percent in late 2009, is now at the lowest point since February 2009. The government report also put the number of unemployed at 12.8 million. A year ago it was at 13.9 million.

While governments continued to cut jobs — federal jobs were cut by 6,000 and local government cut 11,000 positions — the private sector added 257,000. This was more than 50 percent higher than the ADP estimate earlier in the week.

Most sectors added jobs. Manufacturing accounted for 50,000 new jobs. The services sector as a whole added 176,000 workers, with much of the gain coming in what the government calls “professional and business services.” This includes temp workers and employment services (+33,200) and accounting and bookkeeping services (+12,500), likely due to ramping up for tax season.

Healthcare, a consistent growth area, was up by 30,900 positions. Leisure and hospitality, another growth area for several months, was up by 44,000. Even the battered construction industry managed to add 21,000 jobs during the month.

Only finance (off by 5,000 jobs) and the Information sector (-13,000) lost workers. The latter sector includes far more worker categories than computer professionals and data processing, although these areas also lost workers. The bulk of the loss — 7,900 — came in the motion picture and recording industry.

On top of the strong January numbers, the revisions by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics resulted in improving the overall hiring numbers for 2011 and further. For November and December alone, the BLS revisions showed 60,000 more jobs than initially reported.

Finally, the government said average hourly wages for all non-farm workers rose 4 cents during the month to $23.29. While the average workweek for all workers was unchanged in January, the manufacturing workweek increased by .3 hours to 40.9 and overtime increased to 3.4 hours.

The overall report was so strongly welcomed it sent stock futures soaring before the market opening. The Dow Jones Industrial average futures jumped 95 points.

One cautionary note: The Monster Employment Index, which tracks jobs posted on career sites and job boards, including Monster, has been declining since October. For January, the Index stood at 133, down from October’s 151. The Conference Board, which also tracks online job postings, showed an increase in January, as it did in December. But the total online listings are still not as high as they were in April last year.

HR services company ADP says the U.S. added 170,000 private sector jobs in January, providing more evidence that while the economy isn’t backsliding, it also isn’t advancing.

Indeed the January number came in below the average of 182,000, which is what economists in a Bloomberg survey were expecting. A Dow Jones Newswires survey however put the number right at 170,000.

The ADP report also adjusted down the December numbers from the initial 325,000 to 292,000.  Nearly all the January gain, says ADP, came from companies with fewer than 500 workers, and all but 18,000 of the new jobs were in the service sector. Manufacturing added 10,000 workers during the month.

A year ago, ADP said 190,000 private sector jobs were created in January.

Yesterday’s report, says Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, “compares to the 2011 monthly average of 160,000 and thus points to a continued recovery but the mediocre pace this far into a recovery still remains frustrating,” He estimates that Friday’s official report from the U.S. Department of Labor will show 165,000 non-farm jobs created in January.

The ADP National Employment Report, produced jointly with Macroeconomic Advisers, is closely watched by economists as an indication of what the official U.S. Labor Department jobs report will show. The government report is usually released on the first Friday of every month.

The two reports rarely match, largely due to differences in methodology. The government report also includes public sector employment. ADP’s report does not. However, as the Globe and Mail (Canada) said in reporting yesterday’s report, “Take the number with a large pinch of salt, but pay attention to the trend.”

That trend, though, is hard to read. While there hasn’t been a negative month since September 2010 (when census layoffs influenced the numbers), job gains have hovered around 100,000 for most of last year. Only in four months did the official numbers break 200,000. In three months, they were well below 100,000.

Like the job numbers, other signs are positive, if tepid. The Conference Board last week said its Leading Economic Index improved slightly in December  to 94.3. It was the third consecutive monthly increase in the index. (The Board also announced changes in how the index is calculated.) Yesterday, the Board’s monthly count of jobs posted online showed 61,300 more jobs in January than the month before. It’s only the second increase in job postings in eight months.

Economists, now, are not expecting any surprises in Friday’s government report. The Wall Street Journal says economists are expecting it to show 125,000 new jobs and no change in the current 8.5 percent unemployment rate.  Reuters puts the number at 150,000. And Bloomberg, which wrote a long piece this morning about growing optimism in the financial markets and among economists, says the Friday jobs report will come in at 145,000.

Surprising economists and putting an upbeat end to 2011, the U.S. unemployment rate declined to 8.5 percent in December while the economy added 200,000 new non-farm jobs.

It was the fourth consecutive month of declines in the unemployment rate, and the sixth month of six-figure job growth. December’s unemployment rate is the lowest since early 2009.

The official numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor beat all but the most aggressive estimates. Economists were expecting the unemployment rate to rise, and predicted new job numbers in the 150,000 range.

Yesterday, ADP’s monthly employment numbers suggested a January surprise when the company said 325,000 private sector jobs were added in December. Analysts cautioned that the ADP report was not entirely reliable, though they said it pointed in the right direction. This morning’s government report said 212,000 new private sector jobs were added last month.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles and releases the government figures, revised unemployment rates back to January, none by more than .1. November’s initial 8.6 percent was raised to 8.7 percent.

As in the case of the ADP data, seasonal adjustments might be making the jobs numbers somewhat rosier than is actually the case. The New York Times explained that because seasonality takes into account recent year patterns, the drop-off in hiring when the recession began in December 2007 might skew the numbers.

Nonetheless, there is plenty of evidence the economy is continuing to improve. Today’s report said the average workweek for all private, non-farm workers increased to 34.4 hours, while the manufacturing week lengthened to 40.5 hours.

Average hourly earnings rose by 4 cents to $23.24, making the average pay increase for the year 2.1 percent.

“You got the trifecta — more people working, wages up, and the average work week up,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. to Bloomberg News. “You can’t really argue that that isn’t a sign of significant improvement in the job market.”

Some of the strongest signs are the 23,000 new manufacturing jobs in December, the first significant improvement in four months for that sector. Mining, largely in the petroleum industry, was up by 7,000. Transportation and warehousing rose by 50,000 thanks in part to strong seasonal hiring during the month.

For the year, the economy added 1.64 million workers; 1.9 million new private sector jobs were created, but government layoffs offset some 280,000. Nevertheless, it was the most jobs created since 2006, and follows the 940,000 increase in 2010.

Still, the economy overall lost 8.75 million jobs in the recession. And even with the declines in the unemployment rate, some 13.1 million workers are out of a job. Another 8.1 million were working part time in December because they couldn’t find full-time jobs. About 2.5 million more are counted as “marginally attached,” a number unchanged in a year. They aren’t included in the official unemployment count because they didn’t look for work during the government’s survey period.

Together, these 23.7 million unemployed and underemployed workers, show there is still a long way to go to get back to pre-recession levels.

The unemployment rate nudged down, but new jobs in October fell short of what economists expected, according to numbers released this morning by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Economists were expecting at least 100,000 new jobs to have been created last month. Instead, the numbers show only 80,000 new non-farm jobs, all of them coming from the private sector. Government at every level cut a total of 24,000 positions, continuing a trend that began mid-2008 at the state and local levels.

The New York Times described the increase as “mediocre,” and said the report offers little guidance about the direction of the U.S. employment outlook.

Despite the minor drop in the unemployment rate — from the 9.1 percent where it’s been since July, to 9.0 percent — the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the total number of unemployed barely changed. In October, there were 13.9 million Americans out of work. In October, the number was almost 14 million.

Although the change was slight, the ranks of the unemployed, especially those out of work for more than six months and those working part time because they can’t find full time positions, all showed declines from September. The BLS said the so-called involuntary part-timers declined 374,000 to 8.9 million. The long-term unemployed also declined 366,000 to 5.9 million.

One statistic that didn’t change is the number of the so-called marginally attached. These are people who didn’t search for work during the government’s survey period, but wanted a job. The BLS put that number at 2.6 million, almost the same as a year ago.

The government report doesn’t attempt to explain the decrease in the counts. However, it’s not because workers are dropping out of the labor force. The numbers in today’s report say labor force participation rate remained at 64.2 percent in October, and the employment-population ratio was little changed at 58.4 percent.

Workers with the least education are most affected by the economy. Among those without a high school degree the unemployment rate is 13.8 percent. High school grads have a 9.6 percent rate, and those with a college degree have only a 4.4 percent rate.

Rates also vary widely by the type of occupation.

“Although we are experiencing job growth, it’s still not the type of growth to push unemployment down. With that in mind, many individuals do not realize that when you breakdown the 9.0% unemployment rate, the percentage differs greatly based on education, skill and also geography,” observes Joanie Ruge, SVP & Chief Employment Analyst for Randstad Holding US.

“We continue to see a high demand for individuals who possess education and training in engineering, administrative and clerical, IT, and the healthcare field, as well as in the accounting and financial industry. And, finding the right match skill-set wise is still proving difficult for recruiters despite the type of job market we are in.”

Today’s report says most of the jobs in October came from professional and businesses services, leisure and hospitality, health care, and mining. The professional and business services sector, which is largely, but not entirely staffing and temp help, was up 32,000 jobs during the month. The sector has grown by 562,000 jobs in the last year.

Health care added 12,000 jobs and hospitality and leisure employers added 22,000 positions. Mining jobs, principally in the petroleum industry, grew by 6,000 positions.

The workweek didn’t change during the month remaining at 34.3 hours. Manufacturing hours increased by 0.2 hour to 40.5 hours, and factory overtime remained at 3.2 hours.

Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls increased by 5 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $23.19. This increase followed a gain of 6 cents in September. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.8 percent.

That’s still less than the 100,000 economists were expecting, and it’s about a third of what the U.S. needs each month to bring down the unemployment rate. The company, and Macroeconomic Advisers, its partner in the monthly report, also adjusted downward its July estimate to 109,000 from the original 114,000.

In ever-so-cautious language, the report says that the slow job growth in August is “at a pace below what would be consistent with a stable unemployment rate.” That means that should the trend continue, unemployment may rise.

Economists expect that when the official employment numbers are released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor, they’ll show the 9.1 percent unemployment rate unchanged. New jobs are expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 (Bloomberg News) to 80,000 (Dow Jones Newswires).

Meanwhile, The Conference Board this morning said new online job ads in August fell for the third consecutive month, dropping by 164,000. After rising sharply in the first quarter of the year, job listings have mostly been declining and now are only 308,000 ahead of the end of 2010.

“The Supply/Demand rate stands at 3.35, indicating there were just over three unemployed for every online advertised vacancy in July, the latest monthly data available for unemployment,” The Conference Board said in releasing the job ad numbers.

Monday, The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index showed a big drop in August, as consumers expressed pessimism over economic conditions and said he expected fewer jobs in the months ahead.

This morning, however, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas had some good news in its monthly jobs cut report. Announced layoffs, which have been growing, declined in August. The firm said “employers announced plans to trim 51,114 workers from the payrolls in August, a 23-percent decline from July, when the number of job cuts hit a 16-month high of 66,414.”

So far this year, employer announcements total 363,334 job cuts, only 2.9 percent fewer than at the same point last year, said the company. Government and cuts in the non-profit sector accounted for 105,000 of those lost jobs, with retail, aerospace, pharma, and financial industries accounting for another 110,000.

The ADP report said the majority of the job gains in August came from small business. Employers with under 50 workers added 58,000 jobs. The biggest employers, those with more than 500 employees, added a mere 3,000 jobs.

The service sector added 80,000 jobs, while goods producers accounted for the 11,000 others. Manufacturing lost 4,000 jobs during August.

Payroll processor ADP said its analysis of job growth last month showed the economy added 157,000 private sector jobs. Economists were expecting, on average, that as little as half that many new jobs were added.

Meanwhile, initial claims for unemployment dropped last week by 14,000, to 432,000. That’s the lowest number of new claims in seven weeks and a sharper drop than the 3,000 or so predicted by economists. However, data collection was hampered by the holiday weekend, while Minnesota’s government shutdown added some 2,500 workers to the counts.

Still, the 4-week average of initial filings, a method for smoothing out weekly variations, declined to 424,750, a drop of 3,000 from the week before.

The two reports encouraged investors who bid up the Dow some 81 points at noon, New York time. All other major indices also saw gains.

ADP’s National Employment Report is viewed as a signal of what the official U.S. Department of Labor jobs report will show. That report, which will be released in Washington later this morning, was initially predicted to show jobs growth in a range of about 100,000 to 115,000. Now, some analysts suspect the number could go higher.

The two reports rarely coincide, because of what and how they count, as well as the statistical adjustments each make. ADP’s report is derived from its payroll information, and compiled by its partner, Macroeconomic Advisers. The Labor Department’s monthly employment report is developed from surveys of households and businesses across the U.S., and it includes government workers.

Still, the ADP report indicates the general direction of the nation’s payroll changes, and offers a look at where the job growth is strongest.

The biggest gain came from small business, those with fewer than 49 employees. Those businesses added 88,000 new employees to their payrolls. Another 59,000 new jobs were added by businesses employing between 50 and 499 workers. Larger employers added 10,000 new jobs.

Manufacturing firms of all sizes added 24,000 jobs; the service sector accounted for 130,000 new jobs.

“Payroll employment growth at this pace usually implies a steady unemployment rate, perhaps even a modest decline,” said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers. “June’s figures suggest that the economic recovery, which slipped in the spring, might have found new traction in early summer.”

A CareerBuilder survey released yesterday offers support for that view. CareerBuilder says 47 percent of the 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals surveyed expect to hire more workers between now and the end of the year. That’s up from the 41 percent who planned hiring last year.

CareerBuilder offered these highlights:

• Hiring full-time, permanent employees — 35 percent, up from 28 percent in 2010;
• Hiring part-time employees — 15 percent, the same as 2010;
• Hiring contract or temporary employees — 12 percent, up from 9 percent in 2010.

The survey does suggest that companies are cautious in making predictions about their hiring plans. CareerBuilder says that actual hiring in the last eight quarters exceeded hiring predictions. One of the challenges in filling positions is finding workers with the right skills, say the HR managers in the survey. Thirty-six percent say they have open jobs for which they can’t find qualified candidates, an increase from last year’s 32 percent.

Turnover is also a problem, with 18 percent of the survey participants reporting they lost top workers in the last quarter. In the first quarter of the year, 14 percent said they lost a top performer.

Indeed’s monthly job trends numbers are out, and if they are any indication of what’s ahead this week when official employment numbers are released, the news is going to be, ahem, mixed.

On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department will release its monthly employment report for June. Surveys of economists put June’s job in range from the 100,000 predicted by Bloomberg News to Marketwatch’s more optimistic 115,000.

Better than the 54,000 new jobs in May, the estimates are still well below the 182.2 thousand average of the first four months of the year. As a result, economists are not expecting any change in the 9.1 percent unemployment rate.

ADP’s National Employment Report, due out Thursday, will offer some guidance about the magnitude of the growth. Even though the reports measure employment differently, and rarely track perfectly, ADP report is closely watched by analysts and investors for signs of what to expect in the government’s Friday report.

Consumers, however, have their own opinion of the direction of the economy, and it is decidedly negative. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index declined again in June to 58.5 from May’s revised 61.7.

Multiple measures make up the Index, among them consumers’ opinion of job availability. The Conference Board, which released the June index last week, reports:

Consumers’ assessment of the job market was also less favorable. Those stating jobs are “hard to get” increased to 43.8 percent from 43.5 percent, while those stating jobs are “plentiful” decreased to 5.2 percent from 5.7 percent.

Another report from The Conference Board, and Indeed’s monthly report, showed the number of jobs posted online decreased from May to June. The Conference Board’s Help Wanted OnLine series, which tracks the number of new and continuing jobs posted on thousands of sites in the U.S., decreased by 99,700.

Indeed, which tracks 13 employment sectors, reported a slight decrease in the total number of jobs in these categories during the month. Most sectors showed a slight growth in postings during the month, but a 4 percent decline in the healthcare job postings brought down the totals overall.

Human resources jobs declined by 1 percent. The number of searches on Indeed for HR and HR-related jobs was unchanged during the month. “Human resources”, “human resource,” and “HR” lead the keyword searches with 861,000. “Recruiter” was a distant second, with 107,890 searches.

Initial unemployment filings dropped more than economists expected, while the Federal Reserve’s Philadelphia branch reported that manufacturing orders in its region were soaring.

The news helped lift the Dow to a nearly 150-point gain by late afternoon Thursday.

Bloomberg said the 7.5 jump in the Philadelphia Fed’s general economic index pushed the index to 43.4, its highest point since January 1984 and significantly higher than even the most optimistic estimates of economists. The report came on the heels of one from the New York Fed that also showed manufacturing growth, though not as robust as in the Philly area.

Unemployment claims for the weekend March 12 dropped by 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 385,000. MarketWatch said economists had been expecting a more modest decline of 12,000. The 4-week average now stands at 386,250, the lowest since July 2008.

The Labor Department also said continuing unemployment claims dropped 80,000 to 3.7 million. Those on extended benefits rose by 54,000 to 4.36 million at the end of February, the most recent data available.

The Conference Board also released its Index of Leading Economic Indicators, which was up .8 percent in February to 113.4. The Index is a measure of trends in the U.S. economy. A rising Index signals a likely strengthening of business.

“With February’s large gain, the U.S. LEI returned to the strengthening upward trend that began last September,” said Conference Board economist Ataman Ozyildirim. “The LEI is pointing to an economic expansion that should gain more momentum in the coming months. In February, improvements in labor markets, financial components, and consumer expectations more than offset falling housing permits.”

Two other Labor Department reports were also issued. The Consumer Price Index had its largest increase since June 2009, rising last month by .5 percent. Gas and food prices were largely to blame for the jump, although most components of the index were up.

The increase hurt workers who saw their average hourly earnings decline .5 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “This decrease stemmed from a 0.5 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index,” the BLS noted. Over the 12 months, average hourly earnings declined .4 percent. Only because the average workweek increased did weekly earnings show a .2 percent increase.

This decrease stemmed from a 0.5 percent
increase in the Consumer Price Index

The monthly jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department released this morning also included the annual revision of jobs numbers, which showed the economy created 162,000 fewer jobs since February 2010 than had originally been reported.

The January jobs count was far below the various consensus estimates that were mostly in the 140,000 to 148,000 range. Some economists had upped their predictions following Wednesday’s bullish report from ADP of 187,000 private sector jobs added during the month.

But the government report said the private sector produced only 50,000 new jobs in January, a number offset by the continuing decline in government employment. State and federal payrolls shed 4,000 workers, while local government cut 10,000 jobs.

Speculation is that the fierce winter weather in much of the country not only kept workers away from the office, but dampened any hiring plans. The Monster Employment Index for January, also released this morning, dipped eight points from December to 122. The Index measures the number of jobs advertised online across the country, collecting the counts from multiple sites, not just from Monster.

Demonstrating the conflicting nature of much of the jobs data, The Conference Board’s Help-Wanted Online Index took its biggest jump in its six-year history, claiming 438,000 more jobs were advertised in January than in December. However The Conference Board’s release included sharp revisions to its entire data set, which reduced the monthly job counts by about 200,000. The adjustments significantly changed the job ad trend for the last six months. Instead of job ads growing, The Conference Board now says job ads were shrinking.

In any case, the various, and often conflicting, labor data, tells a story of uncertainty. Even what should be good news about unemployment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is tinged with questions. According to today’s report, there were 600,000 fewer unemployed workers in January, which caused the precipitous drop in the unemployment rate.

The unemployment number and demographic data related to employment is determined by surveys completed by households across the U.S. Job counts are determined by surveys of employers. The results of the two surveys at times such as now seems inconsistent. Over the months, though, trends are clear.

But within the so-called Household Survey the report generally showed improvement. The number of people working part-time because they couldn’t find full-time work declined from 8.9 million to 8.4 million. With the labor force numbers holding steady, the implication is that these individuals found other work, rather than just dropped out of the labor force.

Also declining were the number of long-term unemployed, which declined slightly to 6.2 million. But the number of those considered “marginally attached” to the labor force grew by 300,000 to 2.8 million. To be counted in this group an individual must have looked for work in the preceding 12 months, but not during the preceding four weeks, nor did they have a job during the survey period.

In terms of job growth, manufacturing added the most (49,000) and retail added 28,000. Construction was the big losing, shedding 32,000 jobs, probably a direct result of the weather.

We have two areas of placement, including Human Resources professionals through Arlington Resources, Inc., and Accounting and Finance  professionals through Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Over six years ago, we started with our human resources group holding bimonthly meetings specifically to provide networking opportunities for those in transition. We meet so many great people in our profession, and we wanted to help as many people as we can and give back to the human resources community.

The meetings are held at our office in the mornings with coffee and coffee cake provided. We have a facilitator, and each person shares a little bit about their background, what their ideal next position is, what’s in their pipeline, and any other information that might be helpful for the group including other networking events in the area. We focus on being positive and keeping the meetings beneficial to those who attend. Arlington Resources is well known in the HR community and we have received many accolades for providing this networking opportunity for those in transition.

About three years ago, we decided to add another group for our accounting and finance professionals from the people we get to know through Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. The format is the same, and additionally, we do have presentations on various job search skills including resume writing and strategies for getting the interview. Candidates appreciate the genuine interest and honest communications from our office staff. Also, they like to hear what the experiences are from other accounting and finance peers who are also in transition.

As the economy tumbled  two years ago, we decided to take the networking out into the general community. After talking with our local church community, I was able to start the SHARE Job & Networking Ministry to help the general public in their job search. Three other parishes soon joined the efforts.  We hold bimonthly meetings at a local church and host various speakers for the meetings to share information on various job search strategies including writing resumes, how to handle a phone interview, developing your personal brand, using social media to land a position, networking strategies, and so forth. Our speakers share the job search tools, and afterward we have about an hour of networking.  We have volunteers from the community help in coordinating and running the meetings.

I receive numerous messages from those who attend on how helpful it is to have a place to go to learn about conducting a job search. People have shared that realizing others are in the same position they are is beneficial, as is meeting new friends and potential colleagues through the meetings. However, the most rewarding feedback is when attendees share “How They Landed Their New Position!”

We feel very lucky to be able to help others this way!