Don’t buy into today’s BS unemployment rate drop, the size of the U.S. workforce is at a 27-year low and the bulk of the jobs added were “courier services” related to Christmas.

WASHINGTON — 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.

The better-than-expected monthly gain of 200,000 nonfarm jobs means American businesses have replaced more than 3 million of the 4.2 million jobs lost during the past 13 months. The private-sector jobs gained since employment bottomed in February 2010, in percentage terms, is the strongest recovery since the rebound after the 1990–1992 recession, when U.S. businesses added 4.2 million jobs in the same amount of time by late 1993.

The biggest growth came in transportation, especially courier services that staffed up for the holidays, health care and manufacturing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.