US employers added only 49,000 jobs in January, following a December where jobs declined by 227,000.

While the unemployment rate fell from 6.7% to 6.3%, this drop was mostly due to people people who had stopped looking for work and are no longer counted as unemployed. Adding to that, the Labor Department announcement continues to ignore a large chunk of the unemployed.

This miscalculation is due to how the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the official unemployment rate: Only out-of-work Americans who are searching for new positions are categorized as unemployed. If the jobless aren't searching, they are not counted. (The unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed Americans by the civilian labor force count). The true number is the Real Unemployment rate - you arrive at that by

According to an analysis by The Balance:

"In December 2020 the real unemployment rate (U-6) was 11.7%.1 It's much higher than the widely reported unemployment rate (U-3) of 6.7%. Simply put, it's calculated by adding officially unemployed workers to marginally attached workers to under-employed workers, and dividing that figure by the total labor force (including the marginally attached)."

Added to the pain, the ongoing impact is felt the most severely by women - particularly minority women - who have been disproportionately hurt since the job market collapsed in early spring That pattern continued in January. At the same time, the number of men with jobs rose last month.

Layoffs continue - last week, the number of applications for unemployment benefits, though declining for the past few weeks, remained at a 779,000.