I read the monthly BLS jobs report and am amazed at the amount of data, the almost legalese that the report is written and organization (or lack of) of the data in the report.

I am sure that there are experts on and off newsvine that read every word of the monthly report and understand it better than I do.

Here is some excerpted data from the current report

According to the latest unemployment report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 155,000 in December, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.8 percent.

The number of unemployed persons, at 12.2 million, was little changed in December, according to agency officials.

In December, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 4.8 million and accounted for 39.1 percent of the unemployed.

The civilian labor force participation rate held at 63.6 percent in December. The employment-population ratio, at 58.6 percent, was essentially unchanged over the month, Labor officials said.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons remained steady at 7.9 million.

According to the report, in December 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force. (These individuals are not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.)

Of these data points, which should reassure me that things are getting better and that we are “on the right track” and which data points should concern me the most.