The Labor Department says the unemployment rate stayed at 7.8 percent last month. November's rate was revised higher from an initially reported 7.7 percent.

Robust hiring in manufacturing and construction fueled the gains. Construction added 30,000 jobs, the most in 15 months. That likely reflects additional hiring needed to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy and also solid gains in home building that have contributed to a housing recovery.

Manufacturing gained 25,000, the most in nine months.

Even with the gains, hiring is far from accelerating. Employers added an average of 153,000 jobs a month last year, matching the monthly average in 2011.

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The ADP report is seen as a preview of tomorrow's number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sectorwise, jobs in "financial activities" climbed by 14,000 and construction jobs jumped by 39,000, potentially a sign that the housing market is recovering.

On the downside, 187,000 of the new jobs were in the service sector while only 28,000 were what ADP categorizes as "goods producing." Manufacturing positions fell by 11,000. This is relevant because, in very general terms, manufacturing jobs tend to pay better than those in the service sector.

Medium-sized businesses accounted for 102,000 jobs with large companies adding 87,000 and small businesses adding 25,000.

This is a strong improvement over November's ADP report which showed an increase of 148,000 jobs revised up from 118,000.

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But at least one of those job creators says that's bunk. Bill Harris, the former CEO of PayPal and Intuit (the giant software company whose main clients are small business), and the current CEO of Personal Capital, recently wrote a column in Forbes headlined "Tax Cuts Don't Create Jobs." We spoke with him to find out more and he told us marginal tax rates simply aren't the driving concern for companies when they're thinking about creating jobs.

Why do you say tax cuts don’t create jobs?

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The figure, first reported Friday by the social conservative news website CNS.com, has immediatly gained traction on the right. It hits all the right buttons of demonstrating out-of-control government spending while exposing the sham that is the supposedly improving economy. And it does it all in a nifty little eye-popping statistic: First there was the 1 percent, then the 53 percent, followed by the 47 percent, now we have the 73 percent. The one problem is that it's total baloney, but we'll get to that in a second.

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Tepid forecasts were partly tied to Hurricane Sandy, which economists believed would hamper job growth -- and indeed, November's numbers were somewhat lower than in previous months' job reports. In August, September and October an average of 170,000 were added each month. Meanwhile, November's jobless rate was the lowest since December 2008, despite Gallup predictions of an unemployment surge. The pollster put unemployment in November at 8.3 percent (compared to the government's 7.7 percent).

Manufacturing jobs fell by 7,000 and as our own Andrew Leonard noted Friday, despite a media frenzy, the decision by Apple to manufacture one line of Macs in the U.S., alongside other "insourcing" efforts by U.S. corporations, does not mark a glorious  renaissance in U.S. manufacturing.

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The timing was perfect for a growing cohort of economy-watchers eager to make the argument that globalization's malign impact on the American worker has hit high tide and is finally beginning to ebb. Just a week ago, the Atlantic presciently published "The Insourcing Boom," a fascinating in-depth story by Charles Fishman investigating General Electric's decision to start up new appliance assembly lines in the U.S. And "GE is not alone," writes Fishman,  arguing that an increasing number of American corporations are discovering it makes economic sense to bring the factories back home. Apple's news was the exclamation point at the end of the Atlantic's sentence.

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Traditionally, the most prestigious job a law school graduate can get straight out of school is a federal judicial clerkship. Holders of these one-year positions are usually much sought-after by big law firms and other desirable employers, and the competition among law students for federal clerkships is ferocious.

Even at elite law schools, only students at or near the top of class have a reasonable shot at a federal clerkship. In addition, now many young lawyers with sterling resumes have begun applying for clerkships. The result is that any federal judge will be deluged with hundreds of highly qualified candidates for an open position.

In response, the government has created an online application site for judicial clerks, featuring strict rules about when candidates can apply and when clerkship offers can be made. William Martinez, a federal judge in Denver, is currently using the site to solicit applications for a standard year-long clerkship in his chambers.

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Most everyone agreed there's still far to go. They were less likely to blame President Barack Obama for the economic troubles, however, than to point the finger at his predecessor, George W. Bush, according to preliminary results of a national exit poll.

Only a fourth thought they were better off financially than four years ago when Obama was elected in the midst of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. Voters were most likely to say their families were doing about the same, and Obama led among that group.

A third felt worse off, and they were voting heavily for Romney.

The survey of voters as they left polling places showed 6 in 10 ranked the economy the top issue, way ahead of health care, the federal budget deficit or foreign policy. The majority who don't yet see economic improvement were roughly divided over whether things were getting even worse or just stuck in place.

About 4 in 10 blamed Obama for the nation's economic woes, and almost all of them voted for Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

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As one successful investment manager says, “Luck matters in the short term, but skill matters in the long term.” The implication is that Americans looking for skillful economic leadership from the White House would be better served by considering the long-term economic performance of Democratic and Republican presidents rather than the vagaries of the past four years.

Even the simple-seeming question of whether America is better off now than when President Obama took office hides important complexities. Our economy survived what could have been another Great Depression and is now growing, albeit slowly. GDP and the stock market are up; but unemployment remains painfully high, and most people’s real incomes are lower than they were four years ago.

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If Mitt Romney was holding out hope that one last downbeat unemployment report would give his campaign some juice heading into the final weekend of the 2012 campaign, he is sure to be disappointed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday morning that the economy added 171,000 jobs in October, almost 50,000 more than had been expected by economists. The unemployment ticked up one meaningless notch, from 7.8 to 7.9 percent.

Indeed, this is a case where the rise in the unemployment rate is actually an encouraging sign. Total employment in the U.S., according to the BLS's household survey, rose by a very healthy 410,000, but the overall civilian labor force -- defined as the set of all Americans who have jobs or are looking for jobs -- surged by 578,000. The labor force participation rate, accordingly, rose to 63.8 percent. What that means is that Americans who had previously given up on the labor market are now actively looking for jobs again. The unemployment rate rose, paradoxically, because the job market is more encouraging.

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So let's have some fun with that old chestnut: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Auto sales

Four years ago, the automobile market collapsed to its lowest point in 25 years. Sales in October 2008 declined by 32 percent over a year earlier, projecting to an annual rate of 10.6 million.

October 2012's sales won't be quite as robust as September's, mostly due to a big hit at the end of the month from Hurricane Sandy, but all the major car companies except Nissan registered year-on-year growth, and the annual rate is projected to 14.3 million.

Jobless claims

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The payroll processing company ADP reported that private sector employers added 158,000 jobs in October. That's the little surprise: The consensus estimate of economists was that ADP would report around 125,000 new jobs. That's not a great number, but it is in line with what we've been seeing in recent months: confirmation of a slow recovery in the labor market.

But here's the tricky part. On Wednesday, ADP announced that it was rejiggering its methodology for counting jobs. This was long overdue -- ADP's goal, every month, is to come up with a number that ends up close to what the government reports  on the first Friday of every new month. But in the past, ADP's numbers have been a terrible guide to what the BLS reports -- often coming in much higher, or far lower.

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At least this was the insinuation of Fox Nation when they called a possible delay in the October jobs report release "outrageous." Drudge too suggested the delay would be a "mystery," despite the fact that Frankenstorm unmysteriously shuttered D.C. federal offices (where jobs reports are created) for the first part of this week. The Daily Caller noted that "any delay would postpone the release until Monday, likely muting the impact of bad numbers."

Right-wing pundits might put this particular conspiracy theory to bed if today's October jobs report from payroll processor ADP is an indicator of the government's figures. If we go by ADP's numbers, we can expect a jobs report not too damning at all. "Private employers added 158,000 jobs in the month, ADP said, beating economists' forecasts of 143,000," CNN reported Thursday, noting, "Meanwhile, the number of people filing for initial jobless claims fell 9,000 to 363,000 in the latest week, the U.S. government said."

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Funny thing about small businesses. Not only are they responsible for creating lots and lots of jobs, but they're also responsible for the loss of lots and lots of jobs.

That insight comes courtesy of Inc. Magazine's Bo Burlingham, in the intriguing article "Who Really Creates the Jobs?" Burlingham's investigation should be required reading for every pundit who wants to wax eloquent about the government role in spurring small business job creation, because it makes a convincing case that both Republicans and Democrats are going about things all wrong -- at least at the federal level.

"If you were to group together the vast majority of small companies," writes Burlingham, "their net job generation would add up to zero."

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Of Violentacrez, Chen writes:

If you are capable of being offended, Brutsch has almost certainly done something that would offend you, then did his best to rub your face in it. His speciality is distributing images of scantily-clad underage girls, but as Violentacrez he also issued an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed, all on the sprawling online community Reddit. At the time I called Brutsch, his latest project was moderating a new section of Reddit where users posted covert photos they had taken of women in public, usually close-ups of their asses or breasts, for a voyeuristic sexual thrill. It was called "Creepshots."

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Do they have a case? Justin Wolfers, an up-and-coming economist about to begin a prestigious stint at the University of Michigan, emphatically says no. He explained why to Salon.

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On Fox News, which completely ignored the numbers for the first 30 minutes they were out in favor of stories about (what else?) gold and a live performance by 12-year-old Jackie Evancho, host Bill Hemer darkly warned, as he summarized the report, “a lot of questions remain about those numbers.” Co-host Martha MacCallum agreed that the report “raises a  lot questions.” Finally, they brought on Fox Business analyst Stuart Varney to give it to us straight: “There is widespread mistrust of this report and these numbers, because there are clear contradictions.” Varney explained that many of the jobs created are part-time, and that there were discrepancies between the two surveys that make up the report (one looks at jobs added and the other calculates the unemployment rate).

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The 114,000 number nailed the pre-report economist consensus, and normally would not be considered enough to justify such a sharp drop in the unemployment rate. In some quarters, the news was immediately greeted with suspicion. Former GE CEO Jack Welch, for example, immediately tweeted: "Unbelievable jobs numbers ... these Chicago guys will do anything ... can't debate so change numbers."

But the mystery clears up when you look closer. The monthly government labor report is actually based on two separate surveys: the household survey, which generates the unemployment rate, and the establishment survey, which generates the gross jobs totals. In the past few years, sharp drops in the unemployment rate have often been explained by  household survey numbers reporting that Americans have simply given up looking for jobs, thus shrinking the overall size of the labor force. That's generally not a sign of a healthy economy.

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“Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.” This sad litany comes from an idiosyncratic novel by David Markson called The Last Novel, in which he tells the story, in fragmentary anecdotes, of an aging author writing his final book. The novel references hundreds of other writers and artists of various kinds, many of whom went unrecognized during their lives.  Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke. I can’t stand the thought of anyone ending up that way.

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