Payrolls grew by 257,000 in January, but many still searching for good jobs

The nation's payrolls grew by 257,000 jobs in January, but Friday's good news from the U.S. Labor Department did not seem to have reached the Deb Shops warehouse in Northeast Philadelphia.

In December, when the company declared bankruptcy, more than 274 people worked there, in headquarters positions as well as in packing and sorting teen-fashion merchandise to be shipped to hundreds of Deb Shops stores around the country.

On Friday, only about 10 people remained to clean up.

"This is our severance," said a person who answered the phone, but declined to give a name. On Jan. 7, the company announced it would close all 295 stores.

January's unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 5.7 percent from 5.6 percent, the Labor Department reported. The uptick is often the result of more people beginning to look for work, but not immediately landing jobs.

The Labor Department revised its numbers upward for November and December, moving November's number to 429,000 from 353,000 and December's to 329,000 from 252,000.

Despite casino job losses in Atlantic City and the loss of 1,623 jobs across Pennsylvania as Bottom Dollar supermarkets closed, Friday's report showed growth in nearly all major industry sectors.

Jobs were added in construction, manufacturing, wholesale, retail, information businesses, financial activities, professional and business services, education and health, and leisure and hospitality.

"Most importantly, wages surged," Bucks County economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors said in a statement. "The hourly wage jumped the most in over six years," rising 12 cents to $24.75.

"Currently, average hourly earnings are now 2.2 percent ahead of year-ago levels," wrote Doug Handler, chief U.S. economist with IHS, an economic consulting firm based in Massachusetts.

"This performance still keeps earnings near a narrow range of growth around 2 percent that has persisted since late 2009," Handler said in a statement.

Beyond.com chief operating officer James John said that he was optimistic and that he did not need to read Friday's Labor Department report to feel that way.

Every December, Beyond.com, a King of Prussia company that operates online job search engines in a variety of industries and geographical areas, surveys 4,000 job seekers about their confidence in landing a new job in the coming year.

In December 2013, John said, 39 percent said they thought it would be easier to find a job in 2014 than in previous years. When Beyond.com conducted the same survey in December 2014, the number of optimists had jumped to 47 percent.

"For us, it's dramatic," John said. "For the first time in six or seven years," job seekers are beginning to have more clout in the labor market, and "for the job-seeking audience, that's a good thing."

Many economists are cheering the news, but Bart Ruff said that many in his group of laid-off professionals "aren't feeling the love." Ruff founded MyCareerTransitions.com, which is both a website and a free group that helps professionals in transition.

"Attendance at our meetings has not faltered," he wrote in an e-mail. "We have a full house of 130 people signed up for next Saturday's meeting" at Penn State Great Valley.

The only decline was in government hiring, with 10,000 jobs lost at federal, state, and local governments, including 6,000 cuts in U.S. Postal Service jobs.

"The big sword that's hanging out there" is the Postal Service's decision to shut 82 postal mailing facilities, said Jamie Horwitz, a spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union.

The USPS is changing delivery standards - a first-class letter that used to take 1.8 days to deliver will take 2.1 days, for example, says the Postal Service's website.

"Because they lowered the standards, that allows them to shut down 82 postal mailing facilities," Horwitz said. The facilities are closing over the next several months on a rolling basis.

In other key statistics from Friday's report, the number of unemployed people rose to nearly nine million from 8.7 million, but it was lower than a year ago, when it was 10.3 million. Counting discouraged workers and people forced to work part time for economic reasons, the unemployment rate was 11.3 percent, slightly up from 11.2 percent in December, but down from 12.7 percent a year ago.