US employers add robust 304K jobs; joblessness up to 4 pct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers shrugged off last month's partial government shutdown and engaged in a burst of hiring in January, adding 304,000 jobs, the most in nearly a year.

The healthy gain the government reported today illustrated the job market's durability nearly a decade into the economic expansion. The U.S. has now added jobs for 100 straight months, the longest such period on record.

The unemployment rate did rise in January to 4 percent from 3.9 percent, but mostly for a technical reason: Roughly 175,000 federal workers were counted as temporarily unemployed last month because of the shutdown.

The government today also sharply revised down its estimate of job growth in December, to 222,000 from a previously estimated 312,000. Still, hiring has accelerated since last summer, a development that has surprised economists because hiring typically slows when unemployment is so low.

The ongoing demand for workers is leading some businesses to offer higher pay to attract and keep staff. Average hourly wages rose 3.2 percent in January from a year earlier. That's just below the annual gain of 3.3 percent in December, which matched October and November for the fastest increase since April 2009.

The strong job market is also encouraging more people who weren't working to begin looking. The proportion of Americans who either have a job or are seeking one – which had been unusually low since the recession ended a decade ago – reached 63.2 percent in January, the highest level in more than five years.