2009 employment numbers are 600K worse than previously stated as the statistician’s birth death models go out of sync with the real world. Labor department economists had estimated new businesses were started and hiring for all of last year except for one month. Obviously that was totally off the mark.

In addition, another 200K dropped off the labor workforce resulting in a “drop in unemployment” !!

Nonfarm payrolls fell by 20,000 compared with a revised 150,000 drop in December, with the December figure revised sharply downward from an originally reported 85,000 drop. The Labor Department’s annual benchmark revision to the survey showed that last year’s job losses were almost 600,000 more than previously reported.

The unemployment rate may have improved because more people gave up their job searches, said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors. The number of discouraged workers grew to 1.1 million in January, up from 929,000 in December, according to the Labor Department..