US employers added 200,000 jobs in December, jobless rate fell to 8.5 percent
Lowest unemployment rate in three years! 
Economy adds 200,000 jobs in Dec.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. job market strengthened in the second half of 2011, and added 200,000 jobs in December while the unemployment rate fell to 8.5% from a revised 8.7% a month earlier.
That's an even stronger finish than economists had forecast. They had expected employers added a net 150,000 jobs last month, according to a survey by Factset. They also predict that the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.7% from 8.6%, which was the lowest rate since March 2009.
The projected hiring gains would mark a six-month stretch in which the economy generated 100,000 jobs or more in each month. The last time that happened was in April 2006 — more than a year and a half before the country plunged into the Great Recession.
President Barack Obama still could face voters in November with the highest unemployment rate of a sitting president seeking election since World War II. Unemployment was 7.8% when Obama took office in January 2009.
But Obama could benefit if the unemployment rate continues to dip. History suggests that presidents' re-election prospects depend less on the unemployment rate itself than on the rate's direction during the year or two before Election Day.
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http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-01-06/december-unemployment-report/52410436/1
= new reply since forum marked as read
U6 figures also include those considered "marginally attached to the labor force", not only those who work part-time. So it's entirely possible that the "marginally attached" figure declined in the past month while the "part-time" figure remained constant or even rose. And attempting to connect U3 and U6 rise/fall percentage point patterns is bogus statistical shell-gaming: when the U6 rate rose .2 percentage points between Aug and Sept. 2011, did full-time employment increase when the U3 rate declined by .1 percentage point?
The two don't need to move together to be related. If U6 goes up and U3 goes down all that means is we have more people meeting the U6 criteria (looked once in the last year, working part time, marginally attached) but fewer meeting the U3 criteria (looked in the last 4 weeks) If however as happened this time, U6 goes down more than U3, that means the number of people meeting those criteria has declined more than the number meeting U3 criteria. Since we know only 50k left the workforce, there's no way the 200k could be addded to the U6 criteria (the usual doomer response that created jobs were all PT) and have the number drop more than U3.
