Latest jobs report is just good enough to give investors a wake-up call

On its face, the most recent jobs report blew away economists’ expectations. According to the January employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added a gargantuan 353,000 jobs that month. That’s nearly double what economists expected and enough to keep the unemployment rate steady at 3.7%, just a hair above the half-century low of exactly one year prior. Despite the fastest monetary tightening in four decades by the Federal Reserve, the labor market remains tighter than a drum, with even December’s jobs gains revised upwards to 333,000.

Look under the hood, however, and the picture is less pristine.