Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/11/2011 -- The January jobs report from the Labor Department has sent out conflicting trends over exactly how many jobs were created and how the labor force is counted.

The Labor Department says that overall 36,000 nonfarm private sector jobs were created in January. This data is collected from government agencies and businesses. One of the main job creating sectors was manufacturing, where 49,000 jobs were created. In spite of the low level of jobs creation, the unemployment rate went down to 9 percent from 9.4 percent. This is the lowest level since April 2009.

Another survey from the Labor Department, called the household survey shows that the number of people identifying themselves as employed went up by 589,000. The department’s figures also show that 886,000 people could not apply for jobs or could not make it to their jobs because of the severe winter weather in January. Courier and messenger jobs, for example, fell by 45,000 last month. But most economists do not give much creditability to the household survey since it has a reputation for being highly volatile.

Most media outlets and even economists are confused as to exactly what the jobs scenario is right now. But counting the number of job openings shows that there are thousands of openings in almost every sector. Hound, a job search engine, has managed to track down around 154,000 jobs in the last seven days.