The middling January unemployment report: When will Congress focus on jobs?

The labor market is improving at only a sluggish pace. And lawmakers seem fixated on every issue except unemployment

House Speaker John Boehner and his colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been rather MIA when it comes to major job-creating legislation.
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Labor Department reported on Friday that the economy added 157,000 jobs in January, the latest evidence that the labor market is improving at a solid, if not stellar, rate. The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent, from 7.8 percent the previous month, largely because more unemployed people re-entered the workforce in search of jobs.

Repeating a familiar pattern, the private sector created 166,000 jobs in January, while the government — at federal, state, and local levels — shed 9,000 workers. There was strong growth in the retail, construction, and health care industries. Furthermore, the Labor Department, using revised data, said that 335,000 more jobs were created in all of 2012 than initially reported.

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Ryu Spaeth

Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.