U.S. unemployment rate rises to 9.8%

The U.S. economy added just 39,000 jobs in November, significantly below what some economists had predicted given the employment market's much stronger performance in October and indicators pointing to a stronger holiday hiring season.

The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in the latest federal jobs report released Friday. Economists had predicted the rate would remain at 9.6 percent, where it had been stuck the three previous months.

A panel of Bloomberg News economists had predicted a median increase of 150,000 nonfarm jobs, meaning the total of jobs in the private and public sectors. In October, employment expanded by a revised 172,000, up from the previously reported 151,000 jobs.

One of the biggest surprises was that the retail sector lost 28,000 jobs at the start of a holiday-buying season that had gotten off to a significantly stronger start this year compared with last. Though that number was worrisome, some local economists stressed that too much shouldn't be read into one month's worth of statistics.

"We had heard from some retailers that they were going to be hiring, and we heard that retail sales numbers were healthy," said Gary Huth, the New York State Labor Department's principal economist for Long Island. "It makes you wonder whether you could see a potentially significant revision in that number at a later time."

Preliminary monthly jobs data, which are based on the early part of the month, might not reflect efforts to boost hiring for Black Friday. So a more complete employer report for November could change the preliminary numbers for retail, he said.

"This is a very seasonal number and it can be somewhat volatile," he said.

Seasonally adjusted numbers, which the federal government uses for its jobs reports, reflect what typically happens at a particular time of year, to factor out unusual, one-time occurrences. Deviations from those typical economic models are reported as gains or losses.

The retail sector actually added 300,000 jobs on a non-seasonably adjusted basis but was about 28,000 jobs below historical comparisons.

Though he, too, emphasized that one month of data doesn't set a trend, economics professor Gregory DeFreitas, who heads Hofstra University's labor studies program, said the latest jobs report, which showed a gain of 50,000 private sector jobs and a loss of 11,000 government jobs, was of concern. For the U.S. to get back to full employment, the country would need to add 11 million jobs to make up for the 7 million lost during the recession and to provide jobs for new entrants, he said.

"Getting 50,000 jobs is better than nothing, but we have a long way to go," he said.

He also said the latest report is worrisome because the numbers behind the higher unemployment rate reflect more that the ranks of the unemployed are growing, rather than more youth coming into the job market and not finding work or discouraged workers jumping back into the hunt for jobs. Discouraged workers are those who have given up looking for a job. They aren't counted as unemployed until they resume their job search.

"It speaks to not just how fragile the recovery is but that the issue truly remains job creation, not deficits," he said.

The professional and business-services category posted the most job gain - 53,000. Alcott HR Group, a human-resource services firm in Farmingdale, falls into that sector and has added several workers recently.

"You have to take the leap that things are stabilizing and getting better," president Lou Basso said. "And you have to bring on people, especially in the sales and marketing areas, for when things turn around."