The January Jobs Report revealed a spike of 979,000 unemployed workers. It also revealed a drop in the workforce population of 660,000 workers and a drop in both the number of non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) Full-time Workers and a drop in NSA Part-time workers. People who are employed or unemployed are participants in the economy.  It is possible that if you add in the missing participants, those who are not employed and are not officially unemployed, that the U-7 unemployment rate is over 9.98% and could be as high as 12.62%. That same report had data that revealed that five sectors are not back to pre-recession job levels. The Mining/Logging, Construction, Information, Manufacturing and Government Sectors have fewer jobs than they had nine years ago. An even more daunting situation is that  "The Forgotten Male Worker" is working more part-time jobs and fewer full-time jobs than they were working during July 2007, the peak of the pre-recession market. Workforce Participation for men has dropped from 74.34% during July 2006 to 68.61% during January 2017. Officially the U-3 unemployment rate for men is 5.36% NSA. Unofficially, the U-7 Unemployment rate is 12.36%.

We saw record, or near record, levels of people working two part-time jobs almost every month last year. We saw record or near record levels of people working two jobs last year a number of months. People who are working multiple jobs may work two full-time (FT) jobs, two part-time (PT) jobs, a full-time primary job and a secondary PT job, or a primary PT job and a secondary FT job. This column went into detail in the article "Unemployment Claims FACT Misleads" that the elevated level of part-time jobs and the elevated levels of people working two jobs are skewing the unemployment claims lower than they could be reported.

We had the Highest Level of people working two or more jobs for the month of January since January 2008. We are not anywhere near the record level of people working two jobs for January that was set during January 1999.We do have 100,000 more people working multiple job this January compared to last January.Even as we shed over 1 million full-time and part-time jobs during January, the number of people working two jobs only fell by 270,000 people.

We had the second highest level of people working two part-time jobs for the month of January. Last January's 1.976 million people working two part-time jobs is still the record for the month of January. This year's 1.961 million beats out the other 22 years on record.The number of people working two part-time jobs dropped by 107,000 people between December to January.This was a large share of the 716,000 job drop in part-time jobs

We had the second highest level on record for people working two full-time jobs during the month of January. The only other year where we had over 300,000 people working two full-time jobs was  January 1999.  Remember that we lost 555,000 NSA FT jobs during January 2017. The Dual FT job number jumped by 20,000 from December to January and by 70,000 from January 2016 to January 2017.

The number of people who fall into the secondary full-time job with a primary part-time job hit a 13 month high this January. The data for the FT PT, PT PT, and FT FT data are published. The Total MJH number is published. The PT FT number is calculated by subtracting the FT FT, FT PT, and PT PT data from the Total number.  Will we see this number rise as we see Obamacare falter? Will people work for less money full-time in order to obtain health insurance benefits?

We had 7.4 million workers worker two jobs during the course of the 2016. Some months it was close to 7.2 million while other they exceed 8 million. We had 3.9 million to 4.3 million people working a full-time job and a part-time job every month last year. We had an additional 2.0 to 2.2 million people working two part-time jobs each month. When these people lose jobs there is no change in the unemployment number because they are most likely not unemployed, just lesser employed. There is no lesser employed insurance available.  The data for the Seasonally Adjusted Multiple Job Holder data for 2015 was systematically revised for every month of the year. The NSA data was untouched. To what extent? Will we eclipse 2.2 million dual PT workers during the second month of the year? Will we eclipse 2.3 million dual PT workers during any month this year?

It's the economy.