Shocking. Astonishing. Remarkable. We’re running out of adjectives to describe how stunning this jobs report was. Here are some highlights.

The January jobs report should “dash” concerns of recession, Moody’s chief economist said Friday, but warned that the numbers may overstate job growth.

“Any concern the economy is in recession or close to a recession should be completely dashed by these numbers,” Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi told CNN’s Matt Egan on Friday, adding that it would take “an awful lot” to send the US economy into a downturn.

“There is no indication this labor market is going to give up and start suffering job losses anytime soon. Businesses just do not want to lay off workers,” Zandi said. Companies are likely staffing up, he noted, since their number-one problem after any slowdown “will be finding and retaining workers.”

However, despite the blockbuster January number, Zandi said he is concerned the total number of jobs may be overstated — predicting the labor market is not quite “500K strong — it’s probably 250K strong.”

The issue likely lies with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and how it adjusts for seasonal swings. Zandi said the agency has had issues since the pandemic, when the economy shut down and reopened.

“It’s just so boom-like, so out-of-bounds, that it doesn’t seem credible to me,” Zandi said. “This winter has been warm, allowing for more jobs in construction, retail, leisure and hospitality.”

“You get one of these out-of-bounds jobs reports every year or so. This is one of those reports. I just don’t put any weight on it,” Zandi added.

The recent string of job cuts at tech firms probably won’t derail the strong job gains on display in the January jobs report, according to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.

Asked about the tens of thousands of recently announced layoffs in the tech sector and whether that will lead to net job losses, rather than job gains, in future reports, Walsh says he doesn’t think that will be the case.

“A lot of those folk have already got jobs,” he said on CNN Friday morning. “There’s a lot of jobs out there. I know in the tech sector, a lot of the companies are looking for tech support.”

Walsh said that many of the big tech companies that are now cutting staff had been hiring until recently, making it difficult for smaller companies to find the tech help they needed. But he didn’t rule out there could be a drop in overall employment in the sector.

“We’ve got to monitor this. Obviously that could be a reality,” he said. “We’ll know in the next couple of jobs reports.”

President Joe Biden said Friday’s jobs report is “strikingly good news,” arguing that it’s yet another sign that his economic plan is working.

“Next week I’ll be reporting on the State of the Union. But today, I’m happy to report that the State of the Union and the state of our economy is strong,” Biden said in remarks Friday morning at the White House. 

“We learned this morning that the economy’s created 517,000 jobs last month,” Biden continued. “In addition, we also learned that there were half a million more jobs created last year than we thought … add that all up, it means we’ve created more than … 12 million jobs since I took office. That means we have created more jobs in two years than any presidential term at any time, in two years.”

Biden called the latest jobs numbers a “positive sign for the health of the economy going forward,” highlighting declines in the cost of goods and gas.

Responding to critiques that his economic team could not increase jobs while also taming inflation, the president said, “Today’s data makes crystal clear what I’ve always known in my gut: these critics and cynics were wrong. While we may face setbacks along the way … our plan is working because of the grit and resolve of the American worker.”

Friday’s jaw-dropping jobs report should force a bunch of economists and pundits into the corner to think about what they’ve done. 

“The economy is further away from recession than ever,” wrote Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds. “This is one of the days where economists don’t pick up the phone because they simply do not know what to say.” 

With hiring far exceeding expectations, the likelihood of an imminent contraction in the US economy is dwindling.

The prospects of a so-called soft landing — in which the Federal Reserve manages to tame inflation without smothering the labor market — have, until very recently, been framed by analysts and economists as a near-impossible feat and an unlikely outcome. But the labor market’s strength in the face of the most aggressive monetary tightening in modern history suggests the central bank deserves a bit more credit.

“I’d say the chances of the Fed somehow stumbling ass backwards into a true soft landing, arguably the hardest feat in all of monetary policy, just went up,” tweeted Jordan Weissmann, Washington editor for the news outlet Semafor. 

Bottom line: A big, capital-R recession looks increasingly unlikely, at least in the near term. 

“Any concern the economy is in recession or close to a recession should be completely dashed by these numbers,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi told CNN. 

—CNN’s Matt Egan contributed reporting.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan first used the term “irrational exuberance” more than a quarter of a century ago in a speech when talking about the stock market. We might now be in the midst of Irrational Exuberance 2.

The market has been volatile Friday morning following the red hot jobs report, but stocks have still had a strong start to 2023. Techs in particular are sizzling. The Nasdaq has soared 16% already this year.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that investors might be a little too giddy. The market certainly seems frothy. The CNN Business Fear & Greed Index, which looks at seven indicators of sentiment on Wall Street, is now showing signs of Extreme Greed. Just one month ago, the index was registering Fear levels.

Despite some market choppiness this year, the bulls have had the upper hand. In fact, the VIX (VIX), a measure of market volatility that is one of the components of the Fear & Greed Index, has plunged 16% this year and is not far from its 52-week low. That’s a sign of just how strong the market momentum is. Some would argue it borders on investor complacency.

The January jobs report is possibly the biggest labor market surprise ever. Economists were expecting just 185,000 jobs were added last month, but Friday’s number blew that estimate out of the water and was almost double even the most optimistic forecast of 300,000 jobs added. 

Analysts and market watchers struggled to find the words to describe the Friday morning surprise: Juggernaut, barnstormer, bombshell, monster, whopper, explosive, dynamite, blowout, eye-popper, bullet train…

Here’s how economists reacted Friday:

“This is a labor market on heat; nobody would have expected a number as monstrous as this.” — Seema Shah, chief global strategist, Principal Asset Management

“Half a million jobs, climb down off the wall, call the recession off. This isn’t a soft-landing, the economy is still flying high.” — Chris Rupkey, chief economist, FWDBONDS LLC

“The undeniably strong report is what markets hope for coming out of a recession, but not what you want to see when expectations for the end of the Fed rate hike campaign is suddenly challenged by significantly stronger labor market.” — Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist, LPL Financial 

“January was a miraculous month. But good news is good news, and this shows many more Americans working and a jobs market that foreshadows many more Americans likely to take jobs in the future.” — Robert Frick, corporate economist, Navy Federal Credit Union

“Clearly, those who want to work are able to find a job in this economy. How does a recession happen when everyone has a job?” — Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO, RedBalloon.

Friday’s juggernaut of a jobs report may cause complications for the Federal Reserve, said Seema Shah, chief global strategist of Principal Asset Management.

“This is a labor market on heat; nobody would have expected a number as monstrous as this,” Shah said.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been trying to tame high inflation with higher interest rates, but is he now “wondering why he didn’t push back on the loosening in financial conditions?” asked Shah in a note Friday.

“It’s difficult to see how wage pressures can possibly soften sufficiently when jobs growth is as strong as this, and it’s even more difficult to see the Fed stop raising rates and entertain ideas of rate cuts when there is such explosive economic news coming in,” she said.

Wall Street economists expected the US economy to add 185,000 jobs in January…and instead it added 517,000. Oh, and the unemployment rate fell to a 53-year low.

Shocking. Astonishing. Remarkable. We’re running out of adjectives to describe how stunning this jobs report was.

Some highlights:

What does it all mean? The US economy is not in a recession. Despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to slow the economy to cool inflation, the labor market just refuses to quit.

Any hopes that the Federal Reserve would end its rate hike campaign at the conclusion of its next meeting in March were seemingly dashed Friday, following the insanely strong jobs report.

Just after the report’s release, interest rate futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange were pricing in a nearly 95% probability of another quarter-point hike at the Fed’s next meeting — a two-day session that wraps on March 22.

That’s up from odds of about 83% of a so-called 25 basis point increase before the employment data was released.

The central bank, particularly Fed chair Jerome Powell, has stressed that its job of getting inflation under control is not done yet. And given that wage growth is a big component of the inflation picture, the Fed clearly has more work to do. Average hourly earnings rose 4.4% over the past 12 months, slightly more than economists were expecting.