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What Brookings Scholars Are Saying about the Job Numbers

The U.S. economy created 113,000 new jobs in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.6 percent, according to the new job report from the Labor Department. Here’s some of what Brookings experts are saying and tweeting about employment and the January job report.

Senior Fellow Justin Wolfers tells Yahoo! Finance that this job report is a “tricky one and far too easy to misread.”

 

Senior Fellow Gary Burtless offered his analysis of the numbers, calling the January job gains reported by employers “disappointing,” but noting that “the household survey showed much more robust employment increases.”

 

Yesterday, David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, wrote that more than one in six men between 25 and 54 years old are not working. Also, Regis Barnichon, a Brookings Papers on Economic Activity author, wrote, based on his Barnichon-Nekarda model, that “I expect unemployment to remain roughly steady over the next six months with an unemployment rate at 6.6% by June 2014.”  

Some tweets are collected below. Follow @JustinWolfers, @DavidMWessel@Berubea1 for more.

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