Unemployment Ticks up to 7.9 Percent

157,000 jobs added in January

The US unemployment rate edged up to 7.9% in January as the number of new jobs came in below expectations, in a further indication of the fragility of the economic recovery.

Figures released on Friday showed that there were 157,000 new jobs in January, not enough to offset the number of job losses and pushing up the unemployment rate by 0.1 percentage point.