Just when everyone was expecting for some 150,000 jobs to have been absorbed by the economy in January as the holiday glitch of a 103,000 jump from November to December is over, the Bureau of Labor Statistics surprised the entire financial market once more in such a huge scale.

An Unemployment Rate of 8.3 percent would sound better had it been the magnitude of an earthquake in the Richter. According to the BLS, 243,000 jobs were added by the private sector in January. This was the single largest job addition in any month since the record 431,000 in May 2010 if the April 2011 statistic would be discounted as it is just 1,000 more than the January 2012 statistic.

Even more, the post-recession economy reached the lowest jobless rate. But wait, didn’t the US Federal Reserve report that the Unemployment Rate would decline slow and reach the 8 percent level by late-2013? Did Ben Bernanke just defend before the House Budget Committee on Thursday the pledge of lending banks at near zero rates or should we say giving banks almost free money until at least 2014 to help spur the economy and fulfill the other part of the Fed’s dual mandate?

The performance of the American economy, particularly in the employment sector is fascinating. After being stuck at or above 9 percent from spring of 2011 until October, the jobless rate was brought down 80 basis points in just three months.

But digging deeper, the same report revealed that almost 2.7 Million jobs were lost in the same month accounting for the end of the temporary Christmas jobs. Even more, the government, all in the local, state, and federal levels, is shedding more jobs at a faster rate than before.

Even worse, the labor participation rate plummeted to a fresh 30-year low of 63.7 percent. That is, the number of people not in the labor force exploded by a never before registered number of 1.2 Million, in just one month. Construction and manufacturing jobs are hiring at a faster pace as the economy is attempting to replace high paying jobs with these kinds of jobs. Seriously now, is the employment market really improving? Is the performance of the American economy close to being stellar?