Unemployment jumps, job creation slows. Is economic stall-out here?

Groups lobbying for passage of additional unemployment benefits also saw the report as an opportunity to press Congress to act.

“It should be clear as day that the economy is in absolutely no shape to absorb cutbacks in the support that unemployment insurance provides to families, businesses, and overall growth,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project in Washington.

Although the November report did not meet Wall Street’s expectations, the stock market seemed to take the disappointment in stride, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down modestly.

One reason the markets did not react more negatively is that some economists have decided the economy is stronger than the jobs numbers indicate.

“This could be a statistical fluke,” says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poor’s in New York. “The survey was done a week earlier than normal; that could be important for the retail sector.”

In November, the Labor Department reported, the retail sector shed 28,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis. Since then, retailers have reported relatively strong Black Friday sales. “Maybe more people are shopping online. You don’t need to hire as many people to service those calls,” says Mr. Wyss.

The jobs picture darkened, too, for manufacturing, which lost 13,000 jobs, and construction, which shed 5,000 jobs. State and local governments, trying to balance their budgets, continued to lay off workers, with 13,000 losing their jobs during the month.

The only bright spot was temp services, which added 40,000 workers. This increase was no surprise to Roy Krause, CEO of Ft. Lauderdale-based SFN Group, one of the nation’s largest suppliers of temporary workers.

“With the economy slow and uncertainty high, a lot of companies are using temps to begin their expansion phase,” says Mr. Krause. He says his company has had strong demand from industrial companies, accounting and finance firms, and businesses beefing up their clerical staffs.

“A lot of companies are making temps a permanent part of their workforce so [that] they can flex up and down to meet demand,” he says. Looking ahead, he says, he expects December will be “reasonably good” for the temp business, even if a little slower than November, when there were fewer holidays.

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