The Employment Security Department released today the employment situation report for January. The headline numbers look good. Seasonally adjusted, the state added 11,000 jobs in January, and the state unemployment rate fell two-tenths, from 9.3 percent to 9.1 percent.

The private sector added 11,600 jobs: service producing industries added 13,700 jobs, while goods producing industries lost 2,100 jobs. The government sector lost 600 jobs; of these, 500 were in state government and 100 were in local government. (All of these numbers are seasonally adjusted.)

The good news is tempered by the fact that jobs estimates for previous months have been revised downward, as the chart below shows. The revised estimate of December employment is 9,700 less than the initial estimate that ESD released in January employment.

I will feel better about the recovery when benchmark revisions begin adding to rather than subtracting from the state’s job estimates