- The latest jobs report shows the US economy's recovery has been steadier than previously thought.
- The economy added 709,000 more jobs than originally reported in the final 2 months of 2021.
- "The bottom line is that the recovery has been faster and steadier than measured," a former top Obama economist wrote on Twitter.
The US economy is steamrolling its way into a remarkable stretch of job growth.
The latest jobs report released Friday showed the economy added 467,000 jobs in January. The figure smashed forecasters' expectations of dismal growth due to Omicron infections reaching peak levels last month. Omicron's spread upended swaths of the economy, sidelining infected workers and forcing parents to deal with fresh school closures.
January's surprise beat came after two months where job growth as initially reported came in well below economists' estimates, with job reports in both November and December disappointing observers.
But January's strong hiring wasn't the only good news in the report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its previous data for November and December, finding that the economy added 709,000 more jobs than previously reported, closing out 2021 with the labor market gaining steam.
The following chart shows how the revisions impacted month-over-month changes in nonfarm payrolls last year:
"January 2022 will be remembered as the month the virus ceased to be boss. It wreaked havoc & death at a terrible scale. But the economy no longer cares," Jason Furman, a former top Obama administration economist, wrote on Twitter. "People returned to the workforce. The economy added jobs. Wages rose. You would barely know it happened from the economic data."
Despite a better than expected report amid Omicron in January, a record number of workers were employed but out of work because of illness. This number was 3.6 million in January, up from 1.7 million the previous month.
BLS also made other regular annual adjustments to their previous data releases. The changes reflected how the pandemic disrupted the federal government's ability to measure the health of the economy. The agency revised figures for June and July downward, making overall figures from one month to the next seem less turbulent than they originally did through 2021.
"The bottom line is that the recovery has been faster and steadier than measured," Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, wrote on Twitter.
At the industry level in January, leisure and hospitality businesses experienced the largest jump in hiring with firms adding 151,000 payrolls. The sector has led the hiring recovery throughout the pandemic, largely due to the sector shedding the most jobs when the pandemic slammed into the economy.
Other revisions showed warehousing and storage as the sector adding the most jobs in recent months, per Indeed economist Nick Bunker. Wages climbed as well, though inflation continues eating into workers' paychecks. Bunker told Insider that the revisions mean "recovery has been stronger than we previously thought" and that "it's been more stark in terms of its distribution than we previously thought."
"The nice nature of this report, it was not just what happened in January, but also finding out that payroll gains were so much stronger in 2021. [It] looked like that monthly average gain in payrolls was over a half million a month, which is great to see," Bunker told Insider. "I do think it's also noticeable to see how the distribution of gains when it comes to employment changed as well. There's even more transportation and warehousing jobs than we thought and even fewer leisure and hospitality positions."
"Hopefully we can keep up this strong pace of payroll gains while also potentially seeing some more gains from some of the sectors that have been hit hardest," Bunker said.
Insider's Ben Winck contributed to this report.