Surprise! January’s jobs report is great.

The economy added 467,000 jobs, despite a surge in Covid-19 cases; Russia's Putin and China's Xi pledge cooperation against US dominance.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Omicron couldn’t stop January’s job growth

Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images

• The economy added 467,000 jobs in January, far more than expected given the surge in coronavirus cases due to the omicron variant. The numbers were a massive surprise to economists, who predicted the jobs report would show anything from a loss of 400,000 to an increase of 385,000 jobs. [Reuters / Lucia Mutikani]
• January jobs reports sometimes reflect a seasonal change anyway; jobs filled by temporary workers over the holiday season don’t exist anymore, which skews the numbers. But that particular phenomenon may not have factored in this year, since an extremely tight labor market may have pushed employers to hang on to the seasonal temporary workers. [Axios / Neil Irwin]
• January’s numbers, combined with revised data from the end of 2021, show job gains of 6.6 million over the past year. But, at the same time, the unemployment rate increased just a bit to 4 percent, and more than 3.6 million people — about 2 percent of the labor force — reported Covid-19-related absences, more than at any other point in the past two years. [NYT / Ben Casselman and Talmon Joseph Smith]
• The tight labor market, though, has spurred wage increases — they’re up an average of 5.7 percent over the past year. Low unemployment and higher wages are encouraging signs that the Federal Reserve can raise interest rates to try to lower inflation, which is surging to the point that it’s wiping out wage gains. [WSJ / Sarah Chaney Cambon and Gabriel T. Rubin]
• The service and hospitality industry led January’s jobs boom, adding 151,000 jobs primarily in bars and restaurants. The overall labor force participation rose from 61.9 percent to 62.2 percent, with Black women pushing that number and participating in the labor force at a rate of 61.9 percent. [Washington Post / Eli Rosenberg]

Russia and China pledge “deep strategic partnership” against the US

• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced on Friday that they were forging closer ties to counter US influence, solidifying the most significant partnership between the two nations since the Cold War. “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation,” according to an announcement the two leaders made on Friday, as Putin visits Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics. [Reuters / Andrew Osborn and Mark Trevelyan]
• A joint statement released by the Kremlin criticized US dominance, saying, “Some actors representing but the minority on the international scale continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force” and interfere with the “legitimate rights and interests” of other nations. The Chinese government didn’t release the statement at the same time, and references in the government-aligned Xinhua News Agency didn’t make references to NATO, as the Russian version does, though both leaders eventually voiced their strong condemnation of any expansion by NATO forces. [WSJ / Chao Deng and Ann M. Simmons]
• Russia is in a much more vulnerable position entering into the alliance as it faces a potential conflict with NATO over its increasing aggression toward Ukraine. While China decried the rise of NATO, it does have political and trade relations with Ukraine, and any Russian incursion into Ukraine could prove complicated for Xi. [BBC]
• But China has been dealing with a similar crisis in Taiwan, which Xi views as part of China, while the US supports Taiwan’s sovereignty and enables its military expansion. “There is a strong link between the two flash points,” according to Artyom Lukin, an international studies professor at Russia’s Far Eastern Federal University. [NYT / Steven Lee Myers]

Facebook parent company Meta’s valuation has fallen $232 billion, the biggest one-day drop in the history of the stock market. [CNBC / Alex Sherman]

• The Republican National Committee voted to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) for their role in the House investigation into the January 6 , 2021, Capitol riot, claiming that the attack on the Capitol that day amounted to “legitimate political discourse.” [NYT / Jonathan Weisman and Reid J. Epstein]
• The EU has imposed sanctions on Mali’s prime minister and coup leaders after elections have been delayed and the transitional government has failed to implement reforms. [Al Jazeera]
• More conservative members of the UK's Parliament have submitted letters requesting a vote of no confidence for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, bringing the known total to 13 calls for such a vote. [Independent / Andrew Woodcock]

What's the four-letter name of this massive Asian desert?

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“The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”

[Former Vice President Mike Pence in an unusual public repudiation of former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that Pence could have done something to overturn it]

Just how worried should we be about the future of American democracy? [Spotify]

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