Last Friday, the unemployment rate went down to 5.6%. Workers' overtime hours were up, hourly pay was up, regular hours were up. The right things were up, the right things were down. December's new jobs estimate was revised up. The only negative thing was that January produced only 112,000 new jobs (this was the payroll survey). Only. That's "just" 3,612 new jobs a day. And still people are upset.

The press release says that the household survey shows "total employment rose by 496,000 in January." That number is not reported in the press. That would be only 16,000 jobs a day, but it might be that they were underreporting half a million jobs all last year and they are finally catching up. If that's the case, that would mean they were missing only 41,000 jobs a month. That kind of miss makes weather forecasters look good.

Productivity grew 2.7% in the fourth quarter, and this made people grouse, too. Companies may have squeezed every ounce of productivity from their businesses and may have toGASP!buy new equipment or hire more workers to keep their productivity gains going. The most important thing is that productivity is still higher than inflation, and it is likely that this preliminary estimate will be revised up.