The U.S. gained 243,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate dipped to 8.3% as most sectors of the economy added workers, the Labor Department said Friday.

The increase in hiring was the biggest since last April and supplies further evidence that the economy continues to strengthen after a slowdown last summer. The U.S. has added an average of 183,000 jobs a month in the past five months.

Hiring has also become more broad-based. Jobs were added last month in manufacturing and construction, professional services, retail, health care and food and restaurant establishments.

The gain in jobs easily surpassed Wall Street forecasts. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch, for example, predicted the U.S. would add a seasonally adjusted 121,000 jobs last month, with an unemployment rate of 8.5%.

Wall Street reacted positively, with stock futures advancing after the report was published.

As part of its report, the U.S. Labor Department also issued its annual "benchmark" changes to employment data over the past 21 months. The newly revised data show that the U.S. gained 1.82 million jobs in 2011, up from an initial estimate of 1.64 million.

In December, the increase in payrolls was revised up to 203,000 from an initial report of 200,000. And November payrolls were revised up to 157,000 from 100,000.

Although hiring has accelerated since the end of last summer, the U.S. still has a long way to go to recoup all the jobs lost during the 2007-2009 recession. As of last month, 12.76 million people were officially classified as unemployed, and 5.5 million have been without a job for more than six months. That was little changed from December.

Looked at another way, the unemployment rate is an even higher 15.1% if the data includes people with part-time positions who cannot find full-time jobs and those who have recently given up looking for work.

The U.S. would need to add about 250,000 jobs a month for several years to bring the unemployment rate back down to pre-recession levels. The jobless rate ranged from 3.8% to 6.2% in the seven years prior to the 2007-2009 recession.

Also Friday, the U.S. Labor Department said average hourly earnings rose by four cents, or 0.2%, to $23.29 U.S. in January. That was in line with expectations. The average workweek was unchanged at 34.5 hours.