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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 9 percent in January from 9.4 percent although the economy only added 36,000 net jobs.

That number was far fewer than the 146,000 new jobs economists had expected to be created. It was also far below the 120,000 to 200,000 jobs the economy needs to create monthly just to provide jobs for people entering the labor market for the first time.

“The number of unemployed persons decreased by about 600,000 in January to 13.9 million, while the labor force was unchanged,” U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Statistics officials wrote in a release on Friday.

Labor force participation, or the percentage of working-age Americans with either a part- or full-time job, was 64.2 percent. Before the recession, the percentage of working-age Americans with a job was 89 percent or higher.

Labor department officials derive their jobless figures from a monthly telephone survey of 60,000 households.

People who worked for pay at any point during the four weeks prior to the household survey are counted as employed.

People are counted as unemployed if they did not work for pay during the prior four weeks but did actively look for work.

However, people who engaged in passive activities, such as reading the help wanted ads or attending a job training program are not counted as being unemployed.

The household survey counts people as unemployed if they engaged in any of the following activities within the previous four weeks:

• Contacting an employer directly or having a job interview, or contacting a public or private employment agency, or friends or relatives, or a school or university employment center.
• Sending out resumes or filling out applications
• Placing or answering advertisements
• Checking union or professional registers
• Some other means of active job search

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