But what about the so-called Trump effect? After all, the president campaigned on a platform of bringing jobs home from overseas and creating manufacturing jobs where they've disappeared. While all incoming presidents say they want to increase jobs, January doesn't always bear that out.

It turns out that the month of January generally has proved one of the most difficult months to estimate job growth. Since the mid-1950s, the nation has added an average of 119,000 jobs in the month of January, less than the 128,000 average for all months. Januaries with new administrations entering office have actually seen an average net loss of around 4,000 jobs on average.

But that negative average masks a volatile month: January seems to be the hardest month for the BLS to get right in terms of jobs numbers. When the Labor Department puts out its fresh report on jobs added last month, it also revises previous estimates. The revision in nonfarm payrolls in January has the biggest standard deviation — around 146,000 — of any month of the year, at least since 1955. That means the BLS's initial estimate of jobs added in January could be revised wildly in one direction or the other.

Look at January 2001, when the BLS' initial estimate of 226,000 jobs added turned out to be off the mark. The country actually lost 26,000 jobs in the month, the beginning of a slide into recession