Employers Add 200K New Jobs, Unemployment Rate Ticks Down To 8.5%

Happy New Year, job seekers.

Employers added 200,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate ticked down to 8.5%, a signal that the U.S. job market is continuing its slow improvement, the Department of Labor announced Friday morning.

The unemployment rate is the lowest its been since March 2009, and the gains in hiring mark a six-month period in which the economy added 100,000 or more jobs each month. The last time that happened was in April 2006, more than a year and a half before the country was catapulted into the Great Recession.

It's not all necessarily good news though.

Some economists say the unemployment rate fell from 9% in October to 8.6% in November partly because many unemployed Americans gave up looking for work. When that happens, they're no longer considered unemployed.