The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent in January, as 193,000 jobs were added to nonfarm payrolls. January’s job gain fell short of expectations, which had hovered just shy of 250,000.

Yet the “other” employment survey, based on households rather than businesses, shows that those job expectations were actually exceeded. A whopping 298,000 new jobs were created in January – with the vast bulk going to Hispanics, according to the household employment survey.

Because so many Hispanics are immigrants and the children of immigrants, Hispanic employment is the best proxy we have for the impact of immigration on employment. The ratio of Hispanic to non-Hispanic employment growth is a strong indication of how foreign-born workers fare relative to native-born workers in a particular month.

Hispanic employment rose 278,000, or by 1.46 percent in January, while non-Hispanic employment rose 17,000, or 0.01 percent. Not since January 2003 has Hispanic employment increased as much in a single month.

While unemployment declined for all races and ethnicities last month, Hispanics achieved this despite the fact that a significantly larger share of the Hispanic population was in the labor force. In fact, Hispanic LF participation rates rose to 69.3 percent from 68.4 percent in December – a nearly 1 percentage point gain for a statistic that historically moves glacially. The increased confidence evinced by Hispanic job seekers stands in sharp contrast contrasts to non-Hispanics, whose LF participation was unchanged in January.

Over the past five years - January 2001 through January 2006 – Hispanic employment rose by 3,226,000, or 20.0 percent, while non-Hispanic employment increased by 2,072,000, or 1.7 percent. The ratio of the two growth rates, which we call VDAWDI (the VDare.com American Worker Displacement Index), was a record 118.0 in January, up from 116.3 the prior month.