The January jobs report is arriving at a critical time for the U.S. economy. Inflation is rising. The pandemic is still taking a toll. And the Federal Reserve is trying to decide how best to steer the economy through a swirl of competing threats.Unfortunately, the data, which the Labor Department will release on Friday, is unlikely to provide a clear guide.A slew of measurement issues and data quirks will make it hard to assess exactly how the latest coronavirus wave has affected workers and businesses, or to gauge the underlying health of the labor market.“It’s going to be a mess,” said Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, a research group.Data for the report was collected in mid-January, near the peak of the wave of cases associated with th …
