Best monthly jobs report since the Great Recession began four years ago

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Steve Benen has left the Political Animal blog at the Washington Monthly for a gig as a producer of the Rachel Maddow Show. He is still blogging at the Rachel Maddow Blog. And that's a good thing because I rely on him for the monthly jobs charts. Despite ominous signs of recession in Europe due to misguided "austerity" economics, the American economy continues to show signs of recovery. The Maddow Blog – Job growth picks up steam, reaches 2-year high:

Expectations for today's new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were modest, at best.

The nation did much better than that, adding 243,000 jobs in January, as the overall unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%. The job totals are the best we've seen in two years, and the jobless rate has reached its lowest level in three years.

As is always the case, there was a gap between the private and public sectors. Businesses added 257,000 jobs last month, while [state and local] budget cuts forced the public sector to shed another 14,000 jobs.

[I]t's hard not to feel good about the surprising strength of this new report. After years of jobs reports that were only considered encouraging when compared to where we've been, January's total is objectively good news. Indeed, this is one of the best — if not the very best — jobs reports since the recession began four years ago.

In terms of revisions, the job numbers for November and December were better than previously reported. Today, the BLS also released revised totals for every month in the previous calendar year, and those revisions are reflected below.

We now know, in 2011, the economy added 1.8 million jobs, which obviously isn't good enough, but it was still the strongest year for job creation since 2006. We've also seen the economy add over 900,000 jobs in just the last five months.

And with that, here's the homemade chart I run on the first Friday of every month, showing monthly job losses since the start of the Great Recession.

Here's another chart, this one showing monthly job losses/gains in just the private sector since the start of the Great Recession. Note: these reflect the revised BLS data for all of 2011.

Note that this chart demonstrates 23 consecutive months of private sector job growth.

One has to suspend reality and live in an alternate universe to believe the GOP candidates for president, in particular Willard "mittens" Romney who continues to insist that President Obama's economic policies have "made it worse."

Here's another Benen chart showing economic growth by quarter since the start of the Great Recession.

The question reporters should pose to "Mittens" Romney is simple: In what universe did Obama make the recession "worse"?