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The unemployment rate continues to edge downward. The US economy added 243,000 jobs in January, dropping the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent, according to the Department of Labor . The private sector added 257,000 jobs during the month. Here's a look at the unemployment trends from the Bureau of Labor Statistics : Here are some of the key data from other areas we like to track in the monthly jobs report: The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 8.2 million, changed little in January. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. In January, 2.8 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in January, little different from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.7 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in January had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. Read the full report from the BLS here .

Barry Ritholtz would like to rein in the hype about holiday spending. And not just this year. But every year. At least until we focus on some measurements that are reliable. Ritholtz points out that much of the reporting on holiday sales at this time of year is based upon consumer surveys. And those surveys have shown to be way, way off. From Ritholtz's most recent Washington Post column: When you conduct a survey, you are asking people to say what they plan to do. Hence, what you learn is what they believe about their future behavior. We are an unreliable bunch. If you want to learn how much people actually spent, you need to measure that at the cash register. History has shown again and again that there is little correlation between our expectations and our actions. Yes, we want to save more for retirement, lose weight, get into shape. We say so each January. And by February, you will discover the yawning chasm between intentions and action. So when those breathless retail sales surveys were released, we had no idea as to whether, and by exactly how much, sales might climb. The most that could be accurately said was that more people appeared to be in stores on Black Friday 2011 than in 2010. Indeed, that can be explained in part by the unseasonably warm weather around the country; as well as the extended store hours (including midnight Thanksgiving Day). How far off have these surveys been in the past? Enormously. In 2005, based on a survey on Black Friday and Saturday, the NRF forecast a 22 percent increase in holiday shopping gains for the Thanksgiving weekend. The results? Up just 1 percent. The National Retail Federation has been especially off in their projections. On his The Big Picture blog, Ritholtz shows just how far the NRF projections have been: Read Ritholtz's Washington Post Column, Did Black Friday save the season? Beware the retail hype , here . Read Humans Are Awful at Predicting Their Own Behavior at The Big Picture , here .

Many retail businesses are doing everything they can to get customers to like them today and walk through their doors (real and virtual) to make holiday purchases. Many businesses are taking a customer friendly approach. But few are truly "customer centric," according to Wharton's Peter Fader . In his new book, Customer Centricity , Fader argues that top companies need to recognize that being customer centric means using the data available to make distinctions between customers and focusing your outreach on some more than others. He explains his thinking in this Knowledge@Wharton interview:

So the economy is still struggling, and many consumers are reluctant to spend. There is plenty for retailers to be down about. But Marshall Fisher says in some ways this is a great time to be in retail. For one, it is quite easy to figure out how to match supply to demand. Fisher is a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business , and he and Harvard Business School professor Ananth Raman recently made the case for more efficient use of data in The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance . Fisher discussed the book recently in this short interview for Knowledge@Wharton :

The National Retail Federation is projecting a 3% drop in back-to-school spending this year. Given last year's big jump in spending, the drop is a big disappointment for retailers, especially in the electronics sector. While parents and students will focus most of their back to school spending on computers and other electronics, they will on average spend 11% on those goods than last year. The NRF surveyed nearly 9,000back-to-school shoppers and found some interesting, if not entirely surprising, ways in which the slow economic recovery is affecting their consumer choices. Here are the results: Chart: Back-to-School 2011 - How the Economy is Impacting B2S Tags: retail, back to school, national retail federation Powered By: iCharts | create, share, and embed interactive charts online Read the press release for the NRF report here .

To the victors go the spoils. In the world of high tech business, Amazon has been one of the victors. And the spoils have been smaller companies. In the past year, Amazon has acquired at least six companies, Julianne Pepitone reports for CNN Money . Pepitone tells te story of three startups that became part of Amazon: Exchange.com , AmieStreet.com , and Zappos . Each acquisition had a different ending. Exchange.com was brought inside Amazon headquarters. Zappos has so far continued to operate largely as it always has. And ArnieStreet.com was basically swallowed up after being acquired last year: In September, immediately after the acquisition, Amazon announced it was shutting down AmieStreet.com and redirecting its users to Amazon.com. Users' downloaded songs were ported over to Amazon, but that was the end of the demand-based pricing -- and the AmieStreet.com business model. "There was no understanding or guarantee as far as a go-forward plan," Roman says. "We didn't know what they were going to do, and we didn't have anything to do with the day-to-day anymore." Amie Street, Inc., still exists and Amazon remains an investor and board member of the company. Without its namesake site, Amie Street now focuses on Songza, a music-streaming service the company acquired in 2008. Read Why I sold to Amazon: 3 startups' stories here .

Retailers and marketers were an important part of social media's strong growth in 2010. And eMarketer is suggesting that this year retailers will take the next step and move "beyond simply offering Facebook pages and Twitter profiles for their customers to follow." So what might that next step be? For many companies, it could be "social sign-on." From eMarketer: Social sign-on gives retailers access to rich profile information for targeting customers. “Bringing Facebook profile data into retail sites makes sense because it influences consumers when they are close to conversion,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report “Social Commerce: Personalized and Collaborative Shopping Experiences.” “In contrast, many consumers on Facebook are mainly socializing with friends and further removed from making purchase decisions.” Over half of online retailers who responded to an August 2010 survey by Gigya, a provider of social sign-on applications, had either implemented the feature or planned to add it in the near future. Read The Future of Social Shopping here .

The Container Store invests a lot of time and money in its first year employees. And then the company gives them a lot of say in how they do their jobs. CEO Kip Tindell calls it "radical empowerment," and he says it keeps everyone at the company "going in the same direction toward the same ends." Tindell describes The Container Store approach and the rationale behind giving employees great say in how they do their jobs in this Big Think interview: