MSNBC: Jobless Rate Drops to Lowest Level in Almost Three Years

[fasttense]

104. In January the number of employed people jumped 631,000, after adjusting for new population estimate

That quote is directly from your link. What new population estimate are they referring to?

It's difficult to understand all the charts they place at the bottom of the news release to explain the new population estimates.

So I went for a real simple explanation. I looked up Labor Force Participation Rate for the last 16 years. Here is a link http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

It has continually declined since the last half of 2008. It has gone from 66.8% at its highest to 63.7% its lowest for January 2012. That's not so bad right? It's only a 3.1% decline. But as this site explains (thanks to just1voice for posting the link below)http://seekingalpha.com/article/337991-why-u-s-unemployment-rate-is-12-1

"One way is to achieve a lower unemployment rate is to freeze job creation and layoffs today, and drop the participation rate to 60%. By the end of 2012, even with population growth at 1%, the official unemployment rate will be 3.55%, or literally full employment."

So, you could create absolutely NO JOBS and get to 3.% unemployment merely by adjusting the labor force participation rate.