The nonfarm payrolls report just came out, and it was a big miss.

Just 113,000 new jobs were created in January vs. 180,000 expected.

But there are two parts to every jobs report.

One is the Establishment Survey, where they ask businesses how many people they hired in the month. That’s where the 113,000 number came from.

But the other part is the Household Survey, where they ask households whether they gained/lost jobs in the month.

And that side of this report was amazing.

From the report:

After accounting for the annual adjustment to the population controls, the civilian labor force rose by 499,000 in January, and the labor force participation rate edged up to 63.0 percent. Total employment, as measured by the household survey, increased by 616,000 over the month, and the employment-population ratio increased by 0.2 percentage point to 58.8 percent.

Got that? Households reported 616,000 new jobs in the month, and the participation rate rose. And unemployment fell from 6.7% to 6.6%. And the unemployment rate for those with only a high school education fell from 7.1% to 6.5% in one month!

Oh, and the jobs that were created? They were not part-time jobs. In fact, there was a huge drop in people saying they were doing part time hours

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) fell by 514,000 to 7.3 million in January.

As for why there are two parts to the jobs report, and why they can be so different, the BLS explains:

The household survey and establishment survey both produce sample-based estimates of employment, and both have strengths and limitations. The establishment survey employment series has a smaller margin of error on the measurement of month-to-month change than the household survey because of its much larger sample size. An over-the-month employment change of about 100,000 is statistically significant in the establishment survey, while the threshold for a statistically significant change in the household survey is about 400,000.

So you have to take all of the data. According to establishments, January was pretty meh. According to households, it was a great month.

Here’s a roundup of comments about Friday’s Labor Department report showing the U.S. economy added 113,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.6%. Read MarketWatch’s story.

• “Ugh. Payrolls +113k. December revised from +74k to +75k. November from +241k to +274k. Unemployment 6.6% Folks, this isn’t good news.” — Justin Wolfers, Brookings Institution senior fellow. @JustinWolfers

• “For the Fed, this report will confirm their current bias for reducing the pace of asset purchases, consistent with their expectations for the strong momentum in economic activity during the last six months of the year to be sustained in 2014. And as the weather distortions in the data begin to dissipate, we expect the tone of economic data to improve.” — Millan L. Mulraine, deputy head, U.S. research & strategy, TD Securities USA.

• “While US payroll growth of 113,000 disappointed, household survey showed huge growth of 606,000 new jobs!” — Anatole Kaletsky, chairman, New Institute for Economic Thinking.

….full story HERE

With the HFT brigade selling then buying, and trying to goalseek an explanation of why this happened after the fact, one key aspect of today’s release that was ignored is that the BLS just revised its Establishment Survey data, in the process changing all historical job numbers. To wit: “Establishment survey data have been revised as a result of the annual benchmarking process and the updating of seasonal adjustment factors. Also, household survey data for January 2014 reflect updated population estimates.” As a result of this revision, while the monthly changes were not that dramatic, what happened is that the “stock” level of jobs as reflected in the Establishment Survey rose by half a million as of December 31, from 136,877 to 137,386. And so all key historic data – from GDP in early 2013 to jobs – has now been revised to reflect a more rosy economy, and instill consumers with even more confidence in hopes they will spend, spend, spend.

A table summary of the change: before and after – click HERE to get it