Job gains a fraction of January forecast

The U.S. economy added a meager 36,000 jobs in January, about a quarter of what some economists had expected, the government reported Friday. They blamed the weak showing largely on severe weather nationwide.

"Some of what I would have expected to happen in January is likely to happen in February, assuming Mother Nature lets up," said Ken Goldstein, economist for The Conference Board, a Manhattan business-research group.

Economists polled by Bloomberg News had expected employment to expand by 140,000 jobs. Instead, the private sector added 50,000 jobs, while the government sector lost 14,000 jobs. The decline cut net employment growth to 36,000 jobs last month.

The transportation and warehousing sector and the construction category had the highest declines, which were likely seasonal and weather-related declines, the government said.

The report had some bright spots, though. The manufacturing sector, where growth had been slowing since May, added 49,000 jobs in January, the most of any sector. Manufacturing has some of the country's highest-paying jobs and has been credited with helping lead the U.S. economy out of the recession.

Charles Hansen, director of manufacturing at Hauppauge-based Visiontron Corp., said Friday that "things are definitely better." That's a switch from last spring when, he said, business was "very soft."

Just last week, though, the company, which makes posts and ropes used to direct customer traffic at banks and other businesses, extended its factory hours to both Saturday and Sunday to fill a large order for Verizon stores in connection with the release of Apple's iPhone. Visiontron will also provide crowd-control products for Wal-Mart's pharmacies, Hansen said.

"We are turning out a tremendous amount of product that we never dreamed we could," he said.

The company has 40 employees, including two people hired in the past month.

Lori Farley-Toth, the Garden City-based director of sales for the mid-Atlantic division of staffing company Adecco, said local manufacturing growth has spurred demand for more clerical and administrative temp workers in that industry.

On the other hand, she said, demand continues to slacken for financial-services workers, a category that remains in the red at the national level.

The national unemployment rate declined to 9 percent, the lowest since April 2009. But Goldstein, the economist, said more people might have given up looking for work during the severe weather and thus aren't included in unemployment data. Long Island's rate is 7 percent.