Unemployment falls to 9 percent

Unemployment fell nearly a half percentage point to 9 percent last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's the lowest unemployment rate in the country since April 2009.

The bad news, however, is that only 36,000 net new jobs were created, the fewest in four months. The gains were in retail and manufacturing. According to the AP, about a half million people who were out of work said they had found jobs. But in a separate survey, businesses reported they were not hiring many new people. The December numbers were revised to show 121,000 jobs were created instead of the 103,000 predicted earlier.

(Job seekers in a Dallas hotel: AP.)