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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Such staggering figures drew renewed attention to the fact that rising higher education costs and falling government support for state colleges and universities has burdened individual students and their families with immense debt — all at a time when new graduates face anemic prospects for getting a decent job.

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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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Yet, these numbers never tell the full story, and another measure of joblessness shows an unsettling trend: sporadic unemployment for millions of the nation’s workforce.

In 2011, nearly 15 percent of the workforce was unemployed at some point throughout the year—a stark contrast to the official 2011 annual unemployment rate of 8.9 percent. The difference? The over-the-year unemployment rate takes into account the fact that many workers will be unemployed one month and then reemployed the next, while the average annual unemployment rate simply averages the amount of the labor force unemployed that very month. This means that the official annual rate obscures the unsettlingly high amount of job instability in the United States—a trend that is projected to continue into 2013.

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"This is the real cliff," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. He's been leading the effort to include another extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed in any deal to avert looming tax increases and massive spending cuts in January.

"Many of these people are struggling to pay mortgages, to provide education for their children," Reed said this past week as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, rejected each other's opening offers for a deficit deal.

Emergency jobless benefits for about 2.1 million people out of work more than six months will cease Dec. 29, and 1 million more will lose them over the next three months if Congress doesn't extend the assistance again.

Since the collapse of the economy in 2008, the government has poured $520 billion - an amount equal to about half its annual deficit in recent years - into unemployment benefit extensions.

White House officials have assured Democrats that Obama is committed to extending them another year, at a cost of about $30 billion, as part of an agreement for sidestepping the fiscal cliff and reducing the size of annual increases in the federal debt.

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The cost of borrowing is so low — the yield on the ten-year Treasury is near historic lows — and the need for more jobs and better wages so high, and our infrastructure so neglected, that it’s insanity not to borrow more to put more Americans to work rebuilding the nation.

Yes, unemployment is down slightly and 146,000 new jobs were created in November. That’s some progress. But don’t be blinded by the hype coming out of Wall Street and the White House, both of which want the public to believe everything is going wonderfully well.

The fact is some 350,000 more people stopped looking for jobs in November, and the percent of the working-age population in jobs continues to drop — now at 63.6%, almost the lowest in 30 years. Meanwhile, the average workweek is stuck at 34.4 hours.

The slowness of this recovery isn’t because of Hurricane Sandy, which it turns out had very little impact on these job numbers. And it’s not because of any uncertainty over the looming “fiscal cliff.” Most consumers in November were oblivious about any pending cliff.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that payrolls grew by 146,000 last month and unemployment ticked down to 7.7%, the lowest rate since late 2008.  That decline, however, was once again driven by labor force withdrawal, so it should not be taken as a sign of a tighter job market.

Analysts were expecting the impact of the storm on the most densely-packed labor markets in the country to significantly lower the job count.  But the Bureau reported that their survey response rates in the affected states were in the normal range, so they don’t believe Sandy is “substantively” distorting these numbers.

Construction data may, however, reveal some storm-related effects, with jobs off 20,000 in November after growing slightly in prior months as the housing market has begun to show signs of life (we’ll have to wait for the state data release later in the month to see if the losses were in affected states).

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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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Today’s ADP report provides a preliminary glance.  The payroll firm reported 118,000 jobs created in the private sector last month, down from 158,000 in October.

Moody’s.com guesstimated that Sandy led to 86,000 fewer jobs in November.  Since the ADP reports job gains by firm size, one indicator of Sandy’s impact can be seen in the sharper deceleration last month of job growth at smaller firms, which are more likely to be shut down by the storm than larger firms.

The BLS payroll survey–the official employment metric out Friday–asks employers to report their payrolls as of the middle of the month.   The fact that many businesses were closed due to the damage from the storm is expected to lower jobs numbers for November and possibly later months as well.  From the Bureau:

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What we’re talking about is a broad, multi-year agenda to give America’s workers a living wage and voice on the job and to take on the continuing exclusion of workers of color, immigrants, and women from good jobs. The media may have discovered inequality last year with the surprise emergence of Occupy Wall Street, but in truth, there is a 30-year backlog of policies to fix the extreme maldistribution of wages and opportunity in the labor market.

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Deficit reduction leads us in the opposite direction — away from jobs and growth. The reason the “fiscal cliff” is dangerous (and, yes, I know – it’s not really a “cliff” but more like a hill) is because it’s too much deficit reduction, too quickly. It would suck too much demand out of the economy.

But more jobs and growth will help reduce the deficit. With more jobs and faster growth, the deficit will shrink as a proportion of the overall economy. Recall the 1990s when the Clinton administration balanced the budget ahead of the schedule it had set with Congress because of faster job growth than anyone expected — bringing in more tax revenues than anyone had forecast. Europe offers the same lesson in reverse: Their deficits are ballooning because their austerity policies have caused their economies to sink.

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Let’s begin with the harsh facts: Neither policymakers nor the media fully understand or communicate that America has a jobs emergency. In his victory speech last Tuesday, President Obama did not even cite job creation as one of his four main goals for the new term. Not only is unemployment high, but wages are stagnant and poverty is rising in an economic recovery. The evidence on the creation of low-wage jobs rather than high-wage jobs is almost frightening; the Roosevelt Institute’s own Annette Bernhardt has been a leader on this.

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There are about 17.2 million adult children living in their parents’ homes this year, compared with around 15.3 million in 2007, the year the recession began ... And the numbers show that the greatest increases are accounted for by unemployed adult children who have moved in with parents. In 2007, 1.3 million unemployed adult children were living in their parents’ homes. This year, the total is about 2.5 million.

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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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The uptick in unemployment was expected after September’s 0.3 percentage point drop, but a few things are worth noting. First, the 0.1 point increase is statistically indistinguishable from no change at all -- the unemployment rate has to rise or fall about 0.2 points to be significant. At 7.9%, the jobless rate is down significantly -- by one full point -- from its rate one year ago. Second, one reason for the slight uptick was that more people came into the labor market seeking work. We’ll need to see how this development evolves in coming months, but we may be seeing early signs of an improving job market pulling more job seekers in from the sidelines.

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Today’s report showed 171,000 workers were added to payrolls in October, up from 148,000 in September. At the same time, unemployment rose to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent last month. The reason for the seeming disparity: As jobs have begun to return, more people have been entering the labor force seeking employment. The household survey, on which the unemployment percentage is based, counts as “unemployed” only people who are looking for work.

As I’ve said, you have to take a single month’s report with a grain of salt because the job reports bounce around a great deal and are often revised. Last month the BLS announced that 114,000 new jobs were created in September. Today the BLS revised that September figure upward to 148,000.

Overall, the jobs trend is in the right direction. The president and Democrats can take some comfort.

The most disturbing aspect of today’s report is the continuing decline of wages. Average hourly earnings climbed 1.6 percent in October from the same time last year. That’s not enough to match the rate of inflation – meaning that hourly earnings continue to drop in real terms.

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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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Unfortunately, the BLS report is likely to sway some voters — and therefore have an impact on this tight race. But it shouldn’t.

The report surely will be used by one of the candidates to make a sweeping case for himself and against his opponent. An unemployment rate above last month’s 7.8 percent, or a number of new jobs below September’s 114,000, will be wielded by Mitt Romney as evidence the economy is slowing – while a rate below last month’s, and a number above it, will be used by Team Obama as evidence the economy is moving in the right direction.

In truth, no one should base their vote on tomorrow’s labor report because a single month’s report isn’t a reliable gauge of which way the economy is heading. A report that the unemployment rate is 7.8 percent, for example, means only that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 90 percent sure the real rate lies between 7.6 percent and 8.0 percent. By the same token, an announcement that the economy created 100,000 jobs in October means the BLS is 90 percent sure the number of new jobs is between 90,000 and 110,000.

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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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