Here’s a roundup of comments about Friday’s Labor Department report showing the U.S. economy added 113,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.6%. Read MarketWatch’s story.

• “Ugh. Payrolls +113k. December revised from +74k to +75k. November from +241k to +274k. Unemployment 6.6% Folks, this isn’t good news.” — Justin Wolfers, Brookings Institution senior fellow. @JustinWolfers

• “For the Fed, this report will confirm their current bias for reducing the pace of asset purchases, consistent with their expectations for the strong momentum in economic activity during the last six months of the year to be sustained in 2014. And as the weather distortions in the data begin to dissipate, we expect the tone of economic data to improve.” — Millan L. Mulraine, deputy head, U.S. research & strategy, TD Securities USA.

• “While US payroll growth of 113,000 disappointed, household survey showed huge growth of 606,000 new jobs!” — Anatole Kaletsky, chairman, New Institute for Economic Thinking.

….full story HERE

With the HFT brigade selling then buying, and trying to goalseek an explanation of why this happened after the fact, one key aspect of today’s release that was ignored is that the BLS just revised its Establishment Survey data, in the process changing all historical job numbers. To wit: “Establishment survey data have been revised as a result of the annual benchmarking process and the updating of seasonal adjustment factors. Also, household survey data for January 2014 reflect updated population estimates.” As a result of this revision, while the monthly changes were not that dramatic, what happened is that the “stock” level of jobs as reflected in the Establishment Survey rose by half a million as of December 31, from 136,877 to 137,386. And so all key historic data – from GDP in early 2013 to jobs – has now been revised to reflect a more rosy economy, and instill consumers with even more confidence in hopes they will spend, spend, spend.

A table summary of the change: before and after – click HERE to get it

Payrolls in the U.S. rose less than projected in January as retailers cut back after the holidays and government hiring fell. The unemployment rateunexpectedly declined to 6.6 percent.

The 113,000 gain in employment followed a revised 75,000 increase the prior month, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey called for a 180,000 advance. The unemployment ratedropped to the lowest level since October 2008 even as more Americans entered the labor force.

Retailers and government agencies cut payrolls by the most in more than a year, while construction firms and manufacturers boosted employment. Broad-based improvement in job growth is needed to help generate bigger wage gains and spur the consumer spending that accounts for almost 70 percent of the economy.

“It’s another disappointment, but it’s not anything disastrous,” said Julia Coronado, New York-based chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas and a former Federal Reserve economist, who accurately forecast the jobless rate. “We’re still in muddle-along territory rather than take-off mode. There isn’t the kind of momentum in hiring.”

Stock-index futures rose as investors weighed the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring next month climbed 0.6 percent to 1,777.3 at 8:57 a.m. in New York.

Today’s report showed 262,000 Americans were not at work because of inclement weather in January, little changed from the same month last year, suggesting conditions played a more limited role than in December. In the Jan. 10 release of the prior month’s data, the Labor Department had said poor weather kept 273,000 people from work, the most for any December since 1977.