WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Underneath the ice and snow drifts of January, economists say they have uncovered evidence of continued modest payroll growth.
Fresh economic data this week: including weekly initial claims for state unemployment benefits and fourth-quarter productivity, point in the direction of improvement at a measured pace.
“I think broad brush we are still looking at more of the same sort of slow advancement in pace of job creation that we have seen for several months,” said Jim Baird, chief investment strategist for Plante Moran Financial Advisors.

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Neil Sims, managing director of Boyden, a global executive search firm based in San Francisco, agreed he expected “consistent, steady improvement” in payrolls and not an unexpected spike.
Economists polled by MarketWatch expect nonfarm payrolls to rise 140,000 in January after a 103,000 gain in the prior month.
The extreme winter weather probably trimmed payrolls by about 75,000 jobs, economists said.
Economists project that the unemployment rate will tick higher to 9.5% after falling four tenths of a percentage point from 9.8% in November to 9.4% in December.
The Labor Department will release the nonfarm payroll data at 8:30 a.m. on Friday.
Grounds for optimism
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that he saw grounds for optimism on the employment front. He said that stronger payroll data and a drop in the unemployment rate could be expected soon.
Some economists believe that January’s report may be stronger-than-expected. They note that some other data this week: including employment conditions in the factory and service sectors, and a private indicator from Automatic Data Processing Inc., are flashing strength.
Automatic Data Processing Inc. reported that private sector employment rose 187,000 in January.
The Institute for Supply Management’s factory employment index for services rose to 54.5 in January from 52.6 in December. This is the highest level since May 2006.
On Tuesday, the ISM reported that the job index in the factory sector rose to 61.7 in the month, its highest level since 1973.
Wells Fargo’s economic team said that it was upping its forecast for January nonfarm payroll growth to 200,000 jobs from the prior estimate of 175,000 as a result of the two ISM surveys.
Economists are also struggling this month to account for annual benchmark revisions to the data.
The government has estimated that these revisions will show the level of employment in March of last year was 366,000 lower than the current data suggest.
More important to the markets will be any significant revision since then, said Josh Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR Inc.
“It’s really anyone’s guess because of the benchmark revisions,” said Ellen Zentner, senior U.S. Macro Economist at The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch