This morning’s monthly report from the U.S. Department of Labor blasted through even the most optimistic of expectations. The jobs gain would have been the largest since May 2010, except that the Labor Department’s data group adjusted 2011′s jobs numbers. Now, only March (+246,000) and April (+251,000) had stronger numbers.

January is the second consecutive month to beat estimates. Economists predicted anywhere from MarketWatch’s tepid 121,000 to the more optimistic 182,000 in the Bloomberg survey. None of the widely reported surveys saw a decline in the unemployment rate.

Indeed, the unemployment rate, which has been declining very slowly since hitting a peak of 10.1 percent in late 2009, is now at the lowest point since February 2009. The government report also put the number of unemployed at 12.8 million. A year ago it was at 13.9 million.

While governments continued to cut jobs — federal jobs were cut by 6,000 and local government cut 11,000 positions — the private sector added 257,000. This was more than 50 percent higher than the ADP estimate earlier in the week.

Most sectors added jobs. Manufacturing accounted for 50,000 new jobs. The services sector as a whole added 176,000 workers, with much of the gain coming in what the government calls “professional and business services.” This includes temp workers and employment services (+33,200) and accounting and bookkeeping services (+12,500), likely due to ramping up for tax season.

Healthcare, a consistent growth area, was up by 30,900 positions. Leisure and hospitality, another growth area for several months, was up by 44,000. Even the battered construction industry managed to add 21,000 jobs during the month.

Only finance (off by 5,000 jobs) and the Information sector (-13,000) lost workers. The latter sector includes far more worker categories than computer professionals and data processing, although these areas also lost workers. The bulk of the loss — 7,900 — came in the motion picture and recording industry.

On top of the strong January numbers, the revisions by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics resulted in improving the overall hiring numbers for 2011 and further. For November and December alone, the BLS revisions showed 60,000 more jobs than initially reported.

Finally, the government said average hourly wages for all non-farm workers rose 4 cents during the month to $23.29. While the average workweek for all workers was unchanged in January, the manufacturing workweek increased by .3 hours to 40.9 and overtime increased to 3.4 hours.

The overall report was so strongly welcomed it sent stock futures soaring before the market opening. The Dow Jones Industrial average futures jumped 95 points.

One cautionary note: The Monster Employment Index, which tracks jobs posted on career sites and job boards, including Monster, has been declining since October. For January, the Index stood at 133, down from October’s 151. The Conference Board, which also tracks online job postings, showed an increase in January, as it did in December. But the total online listings are still not as high as they were in April last year.

Indeed the January number came in below the average of 182,000, which is what economists in a Bloomberg survey were expecting. A Dow Jones Newswires survey however put the number right at 170,000.

The ADP report also adjusted down the December numbers from the initial 325,000 to 292,000.  Nearly all the January gain, says ADP, came from companies with fewer than 500 workers, and all but 18,000 of the new jobs were in the service sector. Manufacturing added 10,000 workers during the month.

A year ago, ADP said 190,000 private sector jobs were created in January.

This morning’s report, says Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, “compares to the 2011 monthly average of 160,000 and thus points to a continued recovery but the mediocre pace this far into a recovery still remains frustrating,” He estimates that Friday’s official report from the U.S. Department of Labor will show 165,000 non-farm jobs created in January.

The ADP National Employment Report, produced jointly with Macroeconomic Advisers, is closely watched by economists as an indication of what the official U.S. Labor Department jobs report will show. The government report is usually released on the first Friday of every month.

The two reports rarely match, largely due to differences in methodology. The government report also includes public sector employment. ADP’s report does not. However, as the Globe and Mail (Canada) said in reporting this morning’s report, “Take the number with a large pinch of salt, but pay attention to the trend.”

That trend, though, is hard to read. While there hasn’t been a negative month since September 2010 (when census layoffs influenced the numbers), job gains have hovered around 100,000 for most of last year. Only in four months did the official numbers break 200,000. In three months, they were well below 100,000.

Like the job numbers, other signs are positive, if tepid. The Conference Board last week said its Leading Economic Index improved slightly in December  to 94.3. It was the third consecutive monthly increase in the index. (The Board also announced changes in how the index is calculated.) This morning, the Board’s monthly count of jobs posted online showed 61,300 more jobs in January than the month before. It’s only the second increase in job postings in eight months.

Economists, now, are not expecting any surprises in Friday’s government report. The Wall Street Journal says economists are expecting it to show 125,000 new jobs and no change in the current 8.5 percent unemployment rate.  Reuters puts the number at 150,000. And Bloomberg, which wrote a long piece this morning about growing optimism in the financial markets and among economists, says the Friday jobs report will come in at 145,000.

“Most predictions,” says an economic analysis by the Society for Human Resource Management, “are less optimistic now than they were when 2011 began.”

What especially worries economists is whether the slow job growth is due to employer cautiousness — in which case growth will accelerate when economic confidence returns — or whether it is structural, meaning some jobs have been permanently eliminated, much the way automation obsoleted elevator operators.

“It is a fair bet that aggregate demand remains the main problem while pockets of skills mismatches persist, despite the high number of job seekers,” says the SHRM analysis.

The latest economist to weigh in is Gad Levanon, director of macroeconomic research for The Conference Board. Last week, he dissected recoveries of the past to examine the rate of job growth across multiple industries. What he found is that “the current employment recovery is the second slowest on record.”

His analysis led him to conclude that job growth this year is going to be a lot like last year.

Like Huang, the St. Louis Federal Reserve doesn’t see unemployment moving much below 7 percent before 2014 and even then, the Fed says it might even be up around 8 percent. That’s despite the Fed’s guess that real GDP is likely to be over 3 percent, possibly even up to around 4 percent.

Levanon’s analysis, though, offered some support for the SHRM view that it is weak demand that’s limiting job growth. One look at the chart and two things jump out. The first is how small the percentages are now compared to recoveries of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The other is how robust the growth in temporary workers is.

The latter is a good sign. It suggests, at least, that the current pace of job growth is likely to continue. While a nearly 32 percent growth in temporary staffing since June 2009 would historically signal a spurt in full-time job growth, that may not be the case in this recovery. Instead, it may evidence that some structural changes are occurring in how employers manage their workforce.

This is not the same as automation eliminating jobs, but is a response to business cycles — as when retailers add staff in the fall for the holiday season — or project-based needs, or the natural ebb and flow. In other words, more employers may be including the use of temps as a strategic part of their workforce, and not merely as a precursor to fulltime hiring.

This so-called “secular growth” theory is certainly debatable. A Morgan Stanley research paper last spring challenged the notion that temporary and contract workers are becoming a strategic part of corporate employment in the U.S. and worldwide.

However, in a provocative and data-laden analysis of the staffing industry, BMO Capital Markets says “it may be different this time.” While the firm doubted the secular growth notion, now it’s not so sure. The research report issued earlier this month says:

However, by this point in the cycle, we should have seen a significant switch from “temp” to “perm,” but we have not; temp jobs represented nearly 15% of totals jobs added in the current recovery – by far the highest of the first 21 months in the past six post-recession periods – and given the current sluggish rebound, total employment may not return to its pre-recession peak for the first time ever.

There’s evidence now, says BMO, that the proponents of secular growth may be right “and the industry is seeing some secular growth as corporations use temporary staffing more strategically as part of their overall human resource policies.”

The gloomy January outlook says, “For the third consecutive month, hiring activity will decrease and job cuts will rise in the manufacturing and service sectors compared with a year earlier.”

Now click over to The Conference Board and you find that every arrow on its list of U.S. indicators is up. Yesterday, The Conference Board said its Employment Trend Index rose in December for the third consecutive month. This morning, the non-profit business organization released its CEO Confidence measure for the last quarter of 2011. It was up seven points, coming in at 49, just one point below where it turns more positive than negative.

So who’s right and who’s wrong?

Probably no one or everyone. Or at least everyone is partially right. This U.S. recovery, such as it is, is tentative, slow, and unlike those that followed most of the country’s previous recessions.

A few months ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned, “While we still expect that economic activity and labor market conditions will improve gradually over time, the pace of progress is likely to be frustratingly slow.”

“Moreover,” he added, “There are significant downside risks to the economic outlook.”

That economic reports will seesaw on a monthly basis is therefore not surprising. It happened at the beginning of last year when unemployment went from 9.8 percent in November 2010 to 9.4, then 9.1 and to 8.9 percent in March 2011. January’s job growth was 68,000, jumping to 235,000 in February, before dropping like a rock in May, along with the stock market.

As those job numbers grew and unemployment declined, consumer confidence rose, as did several other economic indicators, including The Conference Board’s Employment Trend Index. By May, it all stalled out and some indicators — Consumer Confidence among them — went into decline.

Last month was a bullish month, with the U.S. economy adding 200,000 jobs. It echoed a similarly bullish 152,000 jobs added in December 2010. But that was followed a month later by 68,000 in January. Now the question is, will 2012 repeat  2011. SHRM’s Leading Indicators of National Employment survey is saying January will.

Every month the Society for Human Resource Management surveys HR executives about their hiring plans for the month ahead, as well as their difficulty in recruiting, vacancies, and new hire compensation. The results, broken out for manufacturing and the service sector, are released at the start of the new month and offer an preview of what may happen.

“The LINE results for January 2012 reflect an ongoing trend of subpar growth in job creation,” says SHRM. The key findings from the report predict:

• Low rate of job creation expected for January.
  Hiring activity will fall slightly in manufacturing and sharply in services in January compared with a year ago.
• Recruiting difficulty edges up in both sectors.
  More HR professionals in both sectors reported increased difficulty with recruiting key candidates in December compared with a year ago.
• Some new hires see increases in compensation. In December, the rate of increase for wages and benefits
  rose on an annual basis in manufacturing and fell in services.

If you, like countless other Americans, wonder why the recovery isn’t recovering more quickly, Prof. Stephen P. A. Brown at the University of Nevada Las Vegas offers an explanation. He’s director of the school’s Center for Business and Economic Research, and he says this recovery is different from those that preceeded it because the recession was different.

In “Why Such a Slow Recovery of the U.S. Economy?” Brown says, “Unlike the previous 10 post‐World War II recessions that the United States endured, the 2007‐09 downturn was precipitated by a financial crisis … financial crises tend to lead to recessions that are more severe and recoveries that are substantially slower. In some cases, the crisis may affect economic growth for as much as a decade after the recession’s official end.”

His prediction for the months head?

… employment will grow only fast enough to maintain U.S. unemployment rates in the current range around 9 percent for a sustained period of time. A complete recovery in which economic activity rises to its potential and the unemployment rate is reduced will take a much longer period of time and considerable readjustment in the economy.

It was the fourth consecutive month of declines in the unemployment rate, and the sixth month of six-figure job growth. December’s unemployment rate is the lowest since early 2009.

The official numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor beat all but the most aggressive estimates. Economists were expecting the unemployment rate to rise, and predicted new job numbers in the 150,000 range.

Yesterday, ADP’s monthly employment numbers suggested a January surprise when the company said 325,000 private sector jobs were added in December. Analysts cautioned that the ADP report was not entirely reliable, though they said it pointed in the right direction. This morning’s government report said 212,000 new private sector jobs were added last month.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles and releases the government figures, revised unemployment rates back to January, none by more than .1. November’s initial 8.6 percent was raised to 8.7 percent.

As in the case of the ADP data, seasonal adjustments might be making the jobs numbers somewhat rosier than is actually the case. The New York Times explained that because seasonality takes into account recent year patterns, the drop-off in hiring when the recession began in December 2007 might skew the numbers.

Nonetheless, there is plenty of evidence the economy is continuing to improve. Today’s report said the average workweek for all private, non-farm workers increased to 34.4 hours, while the manufacturing week lengthened to 40.5 hours.

Average hourly earnings rose by 4 cents to $23.24, making the average pay increase for the year 2.1 percent.

“You got the trifecta — more people working, wages up, and the average work week up,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. to Bloomberg News. “You can’t really argue that that isn’t a sign of significant improvement in the job market.”

Some of the strongest signs are the 23,000 new manufacturing jobs in December, the first significant improvement in four months for that sector. Mining, largely in the petroleum industry, was up by 7,000.  Transportation and warehousing rose by 50,000 thanks in part to strong seasonal hiring during the month.

For the year, the economy added 1.64 million workers; 1.9 million new private sector jobs were created, but government layoffs offset some 280,000. Nevertheless, it was the most jobs created since 2006, and follows the 940,000 increase in 2010.

Still, the economy overall lost 8.75 million jobs in the recession. And even with the declines in the unemployment rate, some 13.1 million workers are out of a job. Another 8.1 million were working part time in December because they couldn’t find full-time jobs. About 2.5 million more are counted as “marginally attached,” a number unchanged in a year. They aren’t included in the official unemployment count because they didn’t look for work during the government’s survey period.

Together, these 23.7 million unemployed and underemployed workers, show there is still a long way to go to get back to pre-recession levels.

The job count in ADP’s National Employment Report released this morning was almost twice the estimate of some surveys, and was the highest reported by ADP in a year. A Bloomberg survey of economists put the average estimate at 178,000 jobs; other surveys were in the same range.

Combined with today’s report that initial claims for unemployment dropped by 15,000 last week, the news helped ease a stock market decline prompted by renewed concerns about European debt problems. The reports also prompted some economists to wonder if tomorrow’s official employment report from the U.S. Labor Department will hold a similar surprise.

“The ADP data confirms that the underlying U.S. economy is outperforming the other G10 countries. This should hike up expectations for the non-farm payrolls report on Friday,” said Boris Schlossberg, director of FX Research, GFT.

However, most economists cautioned against reading too much into the ADP report. The Wall Street Journal, in a blog entry headlined “Strong ADP Jobs Gain Needs Grain of Salt,” said the ADP numbers are skewed by end-of-year payroll purges that may not be completely factored in.

Reuters said Joel Prakken, of Macroeconomic Advisers, which helps produce the survey, told reporters that job readings tend to be inflated at year-end as employers keep workers on payrolls for accounting reasons, and the reading could be revised lower.

That happened in December 2010. ADP and Macroeconomic Advisers initially reported the economy created 297,000 jobs. That estimate was subsequently lowered by 51,000. When the official government report was released a few days after ADP’s, it showed only 113,000 private sector jobs were created.

Economists now estimate that when the official December report is out tomorrow morning, it will show the economy added about 150,000 total non-farm jobs. (The U.S. report counts both government and private sector jobs, while the ADP report includes only the latter.) However, the unemployment rate is anticipated to have edged up to 8.7 percent from November’s 8.6 percent, due to the increased number of people looking for work during December.

Even so, economists generally are hopeful about the economy.

“We certainly are seeing resilience in the job market,” Sean Incremona, a senior economist at 4cast Inc. in New York, told Bloomberg. “We’ve seen some improvement versus earlier in 2011 and it’s encouraging.”

The ADP report said most of the job growth came in the service sector, which added 273,000 positions in December. All but 35,000 positions were created by companies with fewer than 500 employees.

Manufacturing added 22,000 positions. The larger, goods-producing sector added 52,000 positions.

Consumer confidence is at the highest level in months. The U.S. economy has been adding jobs now for more than a year. When the December report is released Friday, the expectation is that it, too, will show job growth. ADP’s monthly job numbers will be out Thursday morning, offering a preview of what the official U.S. Labor Department employment data may show.

Today, the stock market is up decisively up on reports of strong growth in manufacturing, and increased construction spending. There’s even a cautious willingness among employers to add even more staff this year.

CareerBuilder says that one in four employers plans to add permanent staff this year, about the same number the job board reported for 2011. The 11 percent unsure what they’ll be doing can be read to mean that if the economy improves — as the rising consumer confidence measures suggest the country expects — then even more hiring could be coming.

Manpower’s quarterly employment survey was even a bit more positive. It found that 14 percent of employers intend to add jobs in the first three months of the year, its strongest hiring outlook since 2008.

Consumers, too, are more hopeful. The venerable Consumer Confidence Index has climbed almost 25 points since October. At 64.5, the Index is at its highest point in eight months. The holiday spirit may account for some of that, but there’s also evidence that employment prospects are brightening. The Conference Board’s employment trends index was up 6.4 percent in November compared to the year before. (December’s result will be released next week.)

Last week, Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that 30 percent of the callers to its annual free, phone-in job help line were optimistic they would land a job within three months. In 2010, only 18 percent thought that was the case.

Since June the number of new jobs created each month has been above 100,000. It’s still a slow growth rate, but it’s a significant improvement over 2010 when six out of the 12 months showed job cuts.

“We continue to hear people say that the U.S. recovery is fragile, and that’s the wrong word,” says Michael Gapen, an economist with Barclays Capital. “It’s durable. It’s just not robust. It’s a moderate expansion.”

That’s one reason companies have been hesitant to add permanent staff. It’s also likely that employers recall that after a strong start to 2011, the recovery stalled as the financial markets began recognizing the seriousness of the European debt crises. In the first four months of 2011, some 714,000 jobs were created. Less than half that were created in the next four months.

World economic conditions are still far from stable. Iran is threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which is starting to send oil futures up. Bank lending hasn’t loosened much and a Presidential election creates more uncertainty about future U.S. economic policy.

With that baggage causing employers to be especially cautious, Monster says that temp hiring is likely to be strong well into 2012. Indeed, in its December report, the American Staffing Association reported that the staffing index has been climbing, slowly, but steadily, since February 2011. The index is now pretty much where it was at the end of last year.

No wonder, then, that job seekers are tempering their expectations about finding permanent work. That Challenger, Gray & Christmas survey also found that many more job seekers this year expect their job search to last a year. In 2010, 4 percent thought that. This year, 10 percent do.

“There was a lot more uncertainty a year ago. Almost half of last year’s callers had no idea how long the job search would take. This year, callers were either certain of the job market’s improvement or certain of its continued weakness,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, referring to the increase in both optimistic and pessimistic callers.

Among the unemployed callers, 37 percent have been out of work for one to six months. Another 14 percent have been jobless for 7 to 12 months. As an indication of how tight the job market remains, the remaining 50 percent of callers had been jobless for a year or more, with 60 percent of these long-time job seekers out of work for two years or longer.

CareerBuilder’s CEO Matt Ferguson predicts a somewhat brighter employment picture for 2012 than the numbers — or the job seeker survey might — imply.

“Historically, our surveys have shown that employers are more conservative in their predictions than actual hiring,” says Ferguson. “Barring any major economic upsets, we expect 2012 to bring a better hiring picture than 2011, especially in the second half of the year.”

The report this morning from the U.S. Department of Labor says 364,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits were filed last week, a decrease of 4,000 from the week before and 59,000 fewer than the same week last year. It’s the third consecutive weekly drop. (Numbers are seasonally adjusted.)

A Reuters poll of economists in advance of this morning’s release predicted the number of new claims would rise to 375,000. The lower-than-expected number helped get stocks off to a strong start this morning despite a Commerce Department report that the third quarter GDP grew at a revised 1.8 percent rate. Previously, the rate had been estimated at 2 percent. Economists were expecting the 2 percent growth rate to stand.

However, there were other positive economic reports. The Thomson Reuters University of Michigan consumer sentiment rose to 69.9 points in December from November’s 64.1, besting expectations it would only reach 68. The index is derived from monthly surveys of consumers nationwide.

The report noted that, “Good times economically were expected in 2012 by 29 percent (of consumers) in December, up from 19 percent in November and the recent low of 14 percent in August. While more consumers heard news of employment gains in December, they didn’t expect that those gains would have much impact on the national unemployment rate in the months ahead.”

However, the survey measures were below last year’s levels and consumers reported being worried about their personal finances. That prompted surveys chief economist Richard Curtin to warn, “If the payroll tax holiday is not extended, it would be a significant drag on economic growth, and would increase the likelihood that weakness in consumer spending would again put the economy at risk of a renewed downturn.”

With Congress stalemated over extending the payroll tax cut, business associations are warning that hiring plans are beginning to be put on hold. The International Franchise Association said this week that failing to extend the cut will “jeopardize the creation of 168,000 new jobs” next year.

If there’s no action by the end of the year, workers will see fewer dollars in their first paychecks of 2012, at just the time bills for their holiday shopping begin to roll in. For workers earning $50,000 annually, it would mean about $19 a week less take home pay.

Much of the attention has been focused on the impact of ending the 2 percent savings on Social Security taxes that has been in effect for a year; without a break in the impasse, some 2.6 million Americans could lose their unemployment benefits. CNN/Money says that by mid-January, nearly 700,000 would lose benefits, which average $300 weekly. By March 3, the number rises to 2.6 million, according to White House estimates.

Rumors have periodically made the rounds of a potential or even pending sale — 20 of them since 2006, according to Bloomberg. All have proven false. But now, says the financial news service, financial analysts and some of Monster’s largest shareholders say the time and price may be right for a takeover.

“The valuation is absurdly cheap,” Eric Green, a Philadelphia-based fund manager at Penn Capital, told Bloomberg. With 3.2 million shares of Monster stock, Penn Capital is one of the company’s largest shareholders.

“The stock has been a clear disappointment,” Green is quoted as saying. He suggested a takeover price of $15 a share. That’s a 92 percent premium over Thursday’s closing price of $7.83. “I would love to see someone buy it,” he said.

Monster’s stock price has declined steadily since hitting a 10-year high of $59.28 in May, 2006. In the last 12 months, the stock has been as high as $25.90, reaching there in January, when the economy seemed ready for a hiring surge. Since August, it has been under $10 a share.

The market value of the company is now about $1 billion, $5 billion less than it was worth in 2006. Its 66 percent decline since the start of this year is the largest of any company included in the S&P 500. As a result, Monster is being moved by Standard & Poors to its MidCap 400 after the market closes today.

Part of the reason for the lackluster stock performance is the weak hiring outlook and the global economic climate of the last few years. Another part is the rise of alternative recruiting channels, especially social media, and especially the launch of LinkedIn as a public company. It bears noting that as hot a launch as LinkedIn had, rising almost immediately upon the start of trading to a high of $122.70, it has been under $75 a share since November. Dice Holdings, the other pure play job board, is also off its 12-month high of $18.75, closing Thursday at $8.75. LinkedIn closed at $66.38. CareerBuilder is privately held by a group of newspaper companies with Gannett owning the majority.

“When the employment market recovers, we’re going to see Monster’s revenue recover,” Avondale analyst Jim Janesky told Bloomberg. “If Monster doesn’t earn the value it deserves in the stock market, then there are various other avenues of recognizing value, and one is certainly a merger or an M&A opportunity.”

Monster declined to comment to Bloomberg and didn’t respond to our email asking for comment.

The quarterly Manpower survey of hiring intentions released today shows 14 percent of employers expect to add to their workforce in the first three months of 2012. Nine percent expect a decline; 7 percent don’t know; and, 70 percent predict no change. With Manpower’s seasonal adjustment, the net result is nine percent overall increase in job growth intentions.

Intentions, of course, don’t necessarily translate into actual hiring. But next quarter’s employer plans at least show the first improvement in a year. Throughout this year, Manpower’s survey of hiring intent stayed at a consistent 8 percent. It’s also the ninth constitutive quarter of positive hiring intentions.

“Slow, but steady momentum has improved employer confidence, which is likely why more employers are planning to hire in the first quarter,” said Jonas Prising, ManpowerGroup president of the Americas.

However, there’s an unusually large number of employers who don’t know what they’ll be doing next quarter. The 7 percent uncertain employers i  the highest since 2005 and the jump between the current fourth quarter, where 3 percent of employers were unsure, to next quarter is the largest since 1977.

“This uptick is encouraging,” Prising, said, “but the historically high proportion of employers that are unsure of their hiring plans indicates continued uncertainty about the future and ongoing caution when it comes to staffing plans.”

Adding to the uncertainty is the continuing debate in the U.S. Congress about extending a payroll tax cut, which expires in less than three weeks, as well as the European bailout and the future of the Euro.

As if to underscore the uncertainty, a survey by Dice Holdings, owner of eFinancialCareers and the IT specialty job board Dice.com, found 47 percent of hiring managers and recruiters saying they expected to increase hiring in the first half of 2012 compared to their hiring in the second half of 2011.

While the Dice results are more optimistic than what Manpower found, both surveys found a majority of companies plan no additional hiring. Dice said 53 percent of the respondents expect no new hiring in the first half of next year; Manpower put the number at 70 percent for the first three months.

Manpower’s survey also found that the most robust hiring will be in the mining sector (which include oil and gas), which is projected to see a seasonally adjusted 16 percent hiring boost. Leisure and hospitality is just behind with a 14 percent net employment outlook. Only construction is expected to see a net jobs decrease. It’s employment outlook is -7 percent.

The job growth announced this morning by the U.S. Department of Labor was at the low end of the various estimates of what economists were expecting, though some predictions were upped following a robust report Wednesday from payroll and HR services firm ADP. The company said 206,000 private sector jobs were added.

The U.S. Labor Department report said private sector, non-farm payrolls increased by 140,000 jobs, but cuts in government jobs decreased the overall number.

The government also revised up the number of new jobs originally reported for September (158,000 to 210,000) and October (80,000 to 100,000).

Wall Street responded to the report by driving up stock prices, not with the same frenzy as it did earlier this week, but still with strength. At mid-morning in New York, the Dow was up almost 100 points.

While any reduction in the unemployment rate is good news, some of it is attributable to a decrease in the number of workers in the labor force. (The labor force is the count of the unemployed and those who have jobs, whether full or part-time.)

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which issues the monthly jobs numbers, said 315,000 Americans had dropped out of the labor force. What happened and why isn’t part of the report. However, the BLS said 2.6 million people (not seasonally adjusted) are considered “marginally attached,” meaning they wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but because they didn’t look for a job during the monthly survey period and weren’t employed, are not included in the labor force count.

A blog post by the Wall Street Journal does a good a job of explaining the nature of the unemployment numbers, which come from one kind of survey, and the jobs numbers, which come from a wholly different type of count.

Overall the ranks of the unemployed decreased by almost 600,000. That leaves 13.3 million people out of work. Another 8.5 million people are working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs.

Whatever the reason, Americans are feeling more confident, at least according to surveys. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index jumped 15 points during the month.

Joanie Ruge, SVP & chief employment analyst with Randstad Holding U.S., noting that the company’s Employee Confidence Index is also rising, said, “Consumers are feeling more positive about their personal employment situation and more optimistic about the economic environment overall.”

The confidence, she observed, is fueling the surge in holiday spending this year, which has so far been running ahead of 2010. “Retail sales were up 7 percent over 2010, with buyers spending $11.4 billion at retail stores and malls this year, marking the biggest year-over-year increase since 2007,” Ruge said, adding that retailers have added perhaps as many as half-a-million seasonal jobs.

“Taking all these factors into consideration, we believe this year will close with moderate but steady economic growth and will continue that trend as we enter 2012. And, since the temp industry is considered a leading economic indicator, it is great to see the sector continue to post year-over-year growth.”

Retail, the BLS said in its report, was responsible for more than a third of the private-sector job growth in November, adding 50,000 positions. Food and drink establishments added 33,000 jobs, offsetting the loss of 12,000 hotel and accommodation jobs.

Healthcare, which has averaged 27,000 new jobs a month over the last year, increased by 17,000. Employment in professional and business services continued to trend up in November (+33,000). Modest job gains continued in temporary help services.

Manufacturing and construction businesses were essentially flat, as they have been for months. Hours for manufacturing workers declined by  0.2 hours to 40.3 hours, offsetting a 0.2 hour gain in the previous month. Factory overtime remained at 3.2 hours in November.

It came as a surprise to economists who had predicted a more modest increase of about 130,000, according to a survey by Dow Jones Newswires. In addition, ADP revised its October private-sector growth number by 20,000 to 130,000.

The ADP report sparked a stock rally that ignited after it became known that the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks were coordinating efforts to help Europe’s debt crisis. The Dow rose more than 400 points, settling at just under that after lunch in New York.

While the numbers don’t often sync well with the official numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor, ADP’s National Employment Report offers guidance about the monthly government report. That report is due out Friday morning. Before today’s ADP report, estimates of what the Labor Department would show ranged from around 100,000 to 130,000. After the release, Reuters reported Deutsche Bank raised its forecast  to 150,000, while Capital Economics adjusted its 1000,000 estimate to 140,000.

The Reuters report also noted the long-running debate among economists over the validity of the various jobs numbers. ADP and its partner in the national report Macroeconomic Advisers produce its job growth estimates from ADP’s payroll processing data. The company handles the payroll for more than 500,000 business clients in the U.S. The official report, produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is derived from a survey of payroll data from some 140,000 businesses and governments.

The ADP report says most of November’s job growth was in the service sector, which added 178,000 positions. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees accounted for 95,000 of those jobs. Businesses from 50-499 workers added 67,000 service jobs.

The goods-producing sector added 28,000 workers. All the gain came from employers with fewer than 500 workers. The biggest employers, those with 500 and more employees, dropped 4,000 jobs during the month.

Tempering the strong jobs growth news from ADP is a Conference Board report showing a sixth consecutive month of fewer jobs being advertised online. The Conference Board’s Help Wanted OnLine survey said 76,200 fewer jobs were posted online in November than in October.

“The November decline in labor demand, following on the heels of the drops for the previous five months, is not good news for the labor market,” said June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board.

During the month 3,857,200 jobs were listed online, according to the data compiled by Wanted Technologies.

Also released this morning was the monthly layoff report from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The firm said U.S. employers announced job cuts totaling 42,474, down 0.7 percent from 42,759 in October. Announced layoffs so far this year are ahead of the total for all of 2010, the firm said. Including the November number, the total this year is 564,297. The total for 2010 was 529,973.

Most of the layoffs this year have come from government, the Challenger report says. Some 180,000 layoffs were announced there. The financial sector was a distant second with 56,000 announced layoffs.

It’s the largest number of  “job-leavers,” as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them, in more than a decade. Included in the count are workers who took buyouts, some who quit ahead of a dismissal, and others who may be taking time off before starting a new job. The bulk, however, are those who decided to leave a job without having another lined up.

There’s no way of telling what kind of workers these job-leavers are. However, any number of surveys over the last few years show there’s a gathering wave of intentions about leaving, if not actual departures.

“Top performers have had it with stagnant opportunities and rewards, and are starting to jump ship now that the job market is a bit looser,” says Dr. Pat Sikor, TNS Employee Insights Senior Researcher. Pointing to declining scores on employee engagement surveys, she says it “reflects the pent-up demand of employees to want more than what they have.”

TNS Employee Insights conducts surveys and research into the effect of employee engagement on business performance. Its recent research shows a dramatic drop in some key measures of engagement. Between 2006 and 2011, TNS found a 17.6 percent reduction in employees who feel their company rewards them according to the value of their performance. There has been a nearly 13 percent decline in their feelings about the company when it comes to personal development and growth.

Other surveys have found similar results. What this suggests is that employees are disengaging, with most choosing not to become job-leavers, but ready to bolt should an opportunity come along.

BlessingWhite, which conducts a periodic broad, global study of engagement, found last year that 13 percent of North American workers planned to leave their current job in a year. That was almost twice the 7 percent who planned to quit in the 2008 survey. While workers were about as engaged last year as in 2008 (57 percent v. 56 percent), the less engaged the worker, the more likely they said they were to leave. Older workers were more likely to be engaged; millennials, the least engaged.

Disengaged and disengaging workers aren’t necessarily minimum performers. There is a correlation between engagement and performance, as the BlessingWhite report details. However, for any number of reasons (many of them referenced in these reports), top performers can grow disenchanted.

Why did workers want to leave? The BlessingWhite survey found 28 percent of North Americans cited lack of career opportunities. That was also an area where the TNS Employee Insights survey saw a decline from 2006. In the 2010 survey, worker satisfaction with career opportunities within their current company had declined 14.3 percent; 48 percent said they were satisfied in the most recent survey.

With the economic malaise continuing and job creation barely keeping up with population growth, most workers aren’t too likely to simply walk out the door with no place to go, although obviously tens of thousands do. Fewer will go out in Joey style, producing a video of his musical resignation seen now by 3 million. But top talent that grows disenchanted has opportunities. Whether they call that headhunter who left them a message or put out the word to their network, they will find another job.

However, as TNS’ Sikor says, “The key to retaining top talent therefore is simple: move the needle and increase employee engagement.” She’ll be one of the speakers at a free TNS webinar on Dec. 6 — “How to Retain Top Talent – Moving the Needle in Employee Engagement,” which is HRCI approved.

From Washington, where Michelle Obama announced yesterday that corporate leaders will hire 100,000 vets and military spouses in the next two years, to a Phoenix job fair today where Chase Bank is encouraging veterans to attend its job fair, the focus has been on addressing veteran hiring. Late Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a veterans jobs bill.

Without a doubt, it is a worthy effort. But it is also one that faces challenges very much like those plaguing the civilian employment situation. The fact of the matter is that unemployed veterans look a whole lot like unemployed civilians: young and undereducated.

A second, smaller, but still substantial problem, is the one facing Reservists and the National Guard: multiple call-ups and the legal obligation to rehire them when they return from duty, makes many employers reluctant to hire them in the first place.

Testifying before Congress four years ago, Ted Daywalt, CEO and president of Vetjobs.com and himself a veteran, said, “The military knows that returning members of the National Guard and Reserve are having civilian re-employment problems.” He told a Congressional committee back then that VetJobs received several calls a month from veterans telling how they were asked about their interest in the Guard or the reserves. “While the question is illegal, it is occurring.”

“Most disturbing,” he added, “as this trend grows, returning National Guard and Reserve personnel — the very people who have been fighting to keep the United States free — will find it harder to obtain meaningful employment equal to their education and experience.”

Little has changed, Daywalt says, since his testimony to Congress. “If you are leaving the military today,” he told me just a few months ago, “companies want to hire you, until they find out you’ve joined the Reserves or are in the Guard.” The call-ups of Reservists and the National Guard may have abated, but employers who had to endure the loss of people in key positions they couldn’t fill or, if they did, had to figure out what to do when the employee returned from service, those employers are reluctant risk it again.

That may explain why the rate of unemployment for the Guard and Reservist veterans of this century’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was 14 percent last year. For all veterans, including the Guard and Reserves, the rate was 11.5 percent.

Under federal law, “returning service members are to be reemployed in the job that they would have attained had they not been absent for military service, with the same seniority, status and pay, as well as other rights and benefits determined by seniority.”

Officially the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act and known by its initials, USERRA, the law is supposed to protect returning vets from being penalized for their active duty service. But, Daywalt says, small and mid-sized employers in particular have found ways to game the system, out of necessity, he adds, not malice. One of the examples he offered in our discussion was of a company where the HR department laid off workers before the acutal call-up orders were issued, thus circumventing the USERRA rules.

According to the Department of Labor, in fiscal 2010, there were 34,612 calls to the customer service center run by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. ESGR is typically the first place employers and veterans turn for help with the requirements of USERRA. Of those contacts, 3,202 resulted in actual cases that required mediation.

When a formal complaint is filed by a veteran, an investigation is launched, which can, though rarely does, lead to a federal prosecution. In fiscal 2010, there were 1,438 new cases; 117 were referred to the Justice Department. Five resulted in DOJ complaints.

Just this month the Justice Department settled a case against Lowe’s, which fired a National Guardsman without cause within a year of his reemployment. Lowe’s paid $45,000 to the fired veteran.

Although, as Daywalt’s Congressional testimony points out, the Guard is also subject to being called out with some frequency for natural disasters, the reemployment and discrimination problems should diminish with the reduction of overseas forces. Less tractable is the high unemployment of young veterans.

Despite what seems to be a prevalent theme that veterans can’t find jobs, the reality is that it is veterans under 25 who are having the most problems finding work.

For all veterans, regardless of age, the unemployment rate last year was 8.7 percent. For the nation, it was 8.8 percent. (The percentages are not seasonally adjusted.) But as you drill down, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics did in a special report on veterans, it becomes obvious quickly that veterans 18-24 are faring the worst. Last year, 20.9 percent of them were unemployed. Those 25-34 had an unemployment rate of 12.6 percent.

Not to minimize the problem, but young vets aren’t much worse off than the youth population generally, especially when you consider the participation rates: more vets are in the labor force than civilians their age. The BLS data for 2010 says the unemployment rate for all 16-24 year-olds was 18.4 percent. (The data for just the 18-24 year group isn’t available. However, the BLS rates for 18-19 year olds in 2010 was 24.2, and 15.5 percent for 20-24 year olds.)

Says the BLS, “In general, Gulf War-era II (Iraq and Afghanistan this century) veterans had unemployment rates that were not statistically different from those of non-veterans of the same gender and age group.” The BlS might also have added educational level to that statement.

Gulf War II vets older than 24 had an overall unemployment rate of 10.2 percent. Those with only a high school degree had a rate of 12.7 percent and about the same for those with some college. However, only 3.9 percent of vets with a college degree were unemployed.  Last month, 4.2 percent of the U.S. labor force with a college degree was unemployed. (The number of vets who didn’t graduate high school was too small to include.)

Thursday, the U.S. Senate approved a bill giving employers tax breaks for hiring disabled and unemployed veterans, and, of particular importance to younger veterans,  providing education and job training benefits.

The jobs report we wrote about today was more of the so-so stuff, with fears of a recession decreasing but life still tough for job-seekers in many fields. Here’s what Johnson and I talked about today as we thought more about the numbers:

We needn’t wait for a magic bullet. You may have read that for unemployment to go down to 7 or 8 percent, we need to grow the economy by some ungodly number that’ll never happen unless we find a way to invent another Internet, make milk chocolate out of solar power, and so on. Johnson’s not sure it’s all that bad. Sure, he says, we’ve lost maybe 8 million jobs and gained only a quarter of those back. So at this rate, depending on who you ask, it’ll be until 2018 or 2020 or 20-something-crazy until life returns to normal. But Johnson says it needn’t take a miracle, or a decade. For one, he says, there are jobs, of course, and some people will go back to school to prepare for them. Also, he says, some things will just improve, like the next bullet point here, construction.

More houses need to be built. Johnson says the country needs somewhere between a million and a million and a half homes to be built each year — but only a half or a third of that is being built now. More housing construction, he says, needs to happen, and eventually will happen, sharply increasing employment in the construction industry. “We aren’t all going to move in with our parents.”

Meanwhile, cheaper housing is making life cheaper for some. Although it may seem like few people are buying and selling houses, Johnson notes that maybe 5 million houses are being sold annually, or about 20 million over the last four years. This, he says, is an economic silver lining because this was “pretty cheap housing,” he says, houses bought somewhere around a third cheaper than before, perhaps enabling some couples to more easily forgo one income for a while, or for one spouse to cut back on hours.

It’s still tough for college grads. I told Bob Johnson that although the unemployment rate is floating around in the 4% range for college graduates, it sure doesn’t feel like it when I know people applying for jobs with 300 other candidates competing. He agrees, saying that the unemployment rate for graduates is in the 2% range in a stronger economy, so indeed, “it’s not as strong as it usually is.”

He also notes that the figure includes anyone who has ever graduated. In other words, to take an extreme case to make the point here — every graduating senior could have trouble getting a job, and it would still not increase the unemployment all that much, since there are tens of millions of Americans who’ve graduated college, and maybe less than a million graduating annually looking for jobs (since some go to graduate school). Johnson notes that his daughter, a Dartmouth senior, knew of an informal survey done at Dartmouth showing that only about 27% of the senior class had a job a month before graduation.

Stores and shopping are changing. I told Johnson it sometimes feels like a deep recession here in Los Angeles, with stores going out of business and the (not atypical) sign on a restaurant door I saw last week saying, “after 16 years, we just couldn’t pay our lease.” I also told him that I thought Amazon and other, more-or-less sales-tax-free shopping options like Diapers.com, are hurting in-person retail. He said that “retail numbers are pretty good,” but that “stores don’t want to compete on price, they want to compete on hours.” Target is finally opening up at midnight, Thanksgiving night. He also notes that self-checkouts at stores, like the groceries he visits in Chicago, are resulting in fewer jobs. Anyhow, he says, “retail employment hasn’t been as robust, but it isn’t fall-of-the-cliff awful.”

Fear of the unemployed lives on. Of course, people’ve talked about this on ERE like Ron Katz, and he’ll get into it more in San Diego next spring. Johnson says “people don’t want to hire someone who doesn’t have a job,” and that they think, “there must be something wrong with this guy.” A big contrast, he says, to engineers, and many accountants, he notes, who, as ERE regulars are experiencing, can choose between multiple offers.

Economists were expecting at least 100,000 new jobs to have been created last month. Instead, the numbers show only 80,000 new non-farm jobs, all of them coming from the private sector. Government at every level cut a total of 24,000 positions, continuing a trend that began mid-2008 at the state and local levels.

The New York Times described the increase as “mediocre,” and said the report offers little guidance about the direction of the U.S. employment outlook.

Despite the minor drop in the unemployment rate — from the 9.1 percent where it’s been since July, to 9.0 percent — the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the total number of unemployed barely changed. In October, there were 13.9 million Americans out of work. In October, the number was almost 14 million.

Although the change was slight, the ranks of the unemployed, especially those out of work for more than six months and those working part time because they can’t find full time positions, all showed declines from September. The BLS said the so-called involuntary part-timers declined 374,000 to 8.9 million. The long-term unemployed also declined 366,000 to 5.9 million.

One statistic that didn’t change is the number of the so-called marginally attached. These are people who didn’t search for work during the government’s survey period, but wanted a job. The BLS put that number at 2.6 million, almost the same as a year ago.

The government report doesn’t attempt to explain the decrease in the counts. However, it’s not because workers are dropping out of the labor force. The numbers in today’s report say labor force participation rate remained at 64.2 percent in October, and the employment-population ratio was little changed at 58.4 percent.

Workers with the least education are most affected by the economy. Among those without a high school degree the unemployment rate is 13.8 percent. High school grads have a 9.6 percent rate, and those with a college degree have only a 4.4 percent rate.

Rates also vary widely by the type of occupation.

“Although we are experiencing job growth, it’s still not the type of growth to push unemployment down. With that in mind, many individuals do not realize that when you breakdown the 9.0% unemployment rate, the percentage differs greatly based on education, skill and also geography,” observes Joanie Ruge, SVP & Chief Employment Analyst for Randstad Holding US.

“We continue to see a high demand for individuals who possess education and training in engineering, administrative and clerical, IT, and the healthcare field, as well as in the accounting and financial industry.  And, finding the right match skill-set wise is still proving difficult for recruiters despite the type of job market we are in.”

Today’s report says most of the jobs in October came from professional and businesses services, leisure and hospitality, health care, and mining. The professional and business services sector, which is largely, but not entirely staffing and temp help, was up 32,000 jobs during the month. The sector has grown by 562,000 jobs in the last year.

Health care added 12,000 jobs and hospitality and leisure employers added 22,000 positions. Mining jobs, principally in the petroleum industry, grew by 6,000 positions.

The workweek didn’t change during the month remaining at 34.3 hours. Manufacturing hours increased by 0.2 hour to 40.5 hours, and factory overtime remained at 3.2 hours.

Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 5 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $23.19. This increase followed a gain of 6 cents in September. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.8 percent.

Payroll processor and HR services company ADP, and its partner, Macroeconomic Advisers, said 110,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in October. That was more than the 100,000 average expected by economists. The monthly report released this morning also revised to 116,000 the number of new jobs added in September. Originally, ADP reported 91,000 jobs were created.

The report helped move stocks into positive territory today, after two days of global meltdown over the Greek decision to send its bailout plan to a referendum. It also offered more evidence that the U.S. may not be headed into another downturn, even if the recovery is sluggish.

“The good news is that employment growth appears stable, but the bad news is that gains of 100,000 or slightly less a month won’t be sufficient to reduce the unemployment rate or generate a pickup in income growth,” wrote Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with Capital Economics, in a research note quoted by MarketWatch.

In another report, global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said “the number of planned job cuts announced by U.S.-based employers plunged in October to 42,759, the lowest monthly total since June.” So far this year 521,823 job cuts have been announced, almost 90,000 more than last year at this point, but still half of what it was in 2009.

The ADP report offers some hints at what might be ahead when the U.S. Labor Department releases the official labor report on Friday. The official numbers include all non-farm payrolls, while ADP counts only the private sector. Cuts by state and local governments have been offsetting some of the monthly job gains for months.

Surveys of economists show the average of new jobs expected in Friday’s report range from MarketWatch’s 90,000 to Bloomberg’s 125,000. Even the higher prediction isn’t enough to make a dent in unemployment, which is expected to remain at 9.1 percent.

Most of the gains in the ADP report came from the service sector, which added 114,000 jobs in October. Manufacturing was the big loser, shedding 8,000 jobs. Small- and medium-sized employers , those with payrolls of up to 499 workers, are responsible for most of the job creation. The two groups added  111,000 workers. Larger employers had a net loss of 2,000 workers.

Healthcare is expected to create 248,500 jobs this year, leading all other sectors including tech. But even as go-go as healthcare is, the pace of job creation there has subsided some.

Nothing surprising there, except that this is India we’re talking about, and not the U.S.

Ma Foi Randstad, the international HR service provider, says India’s torrid jobs growth is slowing up, though the numbers are still at a pace much of the world would envy. According to a Randstad survey of 13 industry sectors, 3rd quarter employment in those sectors was projected to grow by 353,900 workers. But a survey at the end of the quarter estimated the actual hires at 331,200, leading the company to headline its economic summary ”Indian Economy: sluggish but not panicky.“

Randstad’s quarterly surveys cover only a fraction of the country’s 478 million workers, more than half of whom work in agriculture. However the so-called “organized sectors” in the survey contribute a disproportionate share of the nation’s GDP, employing about 35.2 million workers.

As in the U.S., healthcare is the fastest growing of the 13 sectors in the Randstad survey. The company estimated employers would add some 63,800 workers in the 3rd quarter. It now estimates that 60,400 jobs were added.

Only two sectors showed above expected growth: Pharmaceuticals, where 1,300 more jobs than the original 11,300 are believed to have been added, and real estate and construction, which added 1,110 more jobs than the initial 29,600 estimate.

The tech sector, employing about 2 million workers, fell 9,000 jobs short of the 55,500 estimate.

Notes the Randstad survey, “many IT firms (are) becoming cautious in their hiring. This has been further accentuated by the decline in attrition rates since the economic downturn, which has come down to 15% from 25% in the last couple of quarters. Many of the firms are hiring based on their immediate project needs.”

One positive for U.S. and Canadian tech recruiters is that a slowdown in India should make recruiting overseas candidates a little easier. That should be especially true for companies hiring in-country workers to staff their overseas operations.

It should also lessen some of the impetus for H-1 engineers in the U.S. to return to India. Though U.S. companies have seen some Indian expats leave for jobs in their home country paying not much less than they were earning in the U.S., the exodus has been small. Now, with the declining value of the rupee, and the slower pace of hiring, that’s one less issue.

Despite the slower than expected job growth, and a slowdown in the growth of the GDP, from a high a few years ago of 9 percent annually to this year’s projected 7.5 percent, Randstad’s report says “the long term growth story of India is still intact.”

Adds Randstad, “even though a deceleration in job growth rates is now being experienced, in the longer term the economy still retains the wherewithal to jump back — the numbers may be sluggish, but there is no need to press the panic button as yet.”

After a Tuesday night party worthy of a last century Silicon Valley event, a bleary-eyed audience was brought to its feet by former basketball great and now-successful businessman Magic Johnson. Roaming the cavernous convention hall, he mixed photo ops with motivational lessons from his life, which took him from high school standout to Laker star and now to business success as the CEO of multi-million dollar development companies that work largely in inner city neighborhoods.

He offered up such chestnuts as  ”It’s not enough to deliver … you have to overdeliver”; “losers lose and winners win”; and others as he told his life story. It was an entertaining almost 90 minutes that went into overtime as Johnson took questions, hustling over to each person to make sure they could get a picture of themselves with the NBA legend.

A more serious and sober panel followed, talking about, of all things, data. Johnson’s razzle-dazzle was a tough act to follow, but what the session offered was a glimpse into the future for HR and, very plainly, for LinkedIn.

The crux of what the panelists had to say is that we are swimming in data, more data than has ever before existed in the history of the world, and companies are just now beginning to learn how to effectively mine it for competitive purposes.

Four very smart people shared the stage — Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn; Tim O’Reilly founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Michael Chui of McKinsey, and Josh Bersin CEO of the HR consulting firm Bersin & Associates. Analyzing all the recruiting and employee data that companies gather has been a powerful trend in HR for years, but from what the panelists said, the information already in company servers and HR hard drives has barely been tapped.

Companies that learn how to use it will be able to make decisions about all sorts of business issues, not the least of which is workforce planning and recruiting. Bersin, the moderator, naturally enough opened the session with a reference to Moneyball, the movie about how the Oakland A’s mined statistical data to put together a winning team on a shoestring (as Major League Baseball goes) budget.

The session, quipped Bersin, should be called “Moneyball comes to HR.”

The sit-up-and-take-notice moment came when LinkedIn demonstrated how the company is mining the 120 million+ profiles and other data it has and making it available for recruiters. Go into LinkedIn Skills and do a search yourself and you’ll discover the rich information that results. The demo search for “android” turned up ranked lists of LinkedIn members who are professionals in the field, as well as lists of additional skills that android experts list in their profiles. Not sure what companies hire mobile experts? The Skills results page tells you. Same for where they are located and more.

A recruiter could use this data in multiple ways, including compiling skills checklists, discovering the companies that have mobile professionals on staff, the groups they join, and, of course the names of professionals whose connections they may be able to leverage.

Skills is in beta, so expect some hiccups. My own search for “editors” included a Wikipedia reference to a British rock band by that name. Still, Skills is a useful resource as it is now, and it hints at the even deeper data LinkedIn has.

As the panelists noted, every company has some of that same kind of information about its workforce. Mined and, as Chui said, integrated with data from outside the company, data such as that available free from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, then, as he maintained, “It really matters on a bottom-line basis.” Big data,” he said, “is a big deal.”

American non-farm payrolls grew by 103,000 jobs last month and by 57,000 jobs in August. The Labor Department also revised up its July jobs numbers from 85,000 to 127,000. Economists predicted September’s number would come in closer to 60,000.

Certainly a positive, the numbers weren’t enough to make a dent in the ranks of the unemployed, leaving the unemployment rate at 9.1 percent. It has hovered there since April.

A big part of the September increase in the jobs count was due to the return to work of some 45,000 Verizon employees who were on strike in August. Even so, the jobs report showed the private sector added 92,000 after accounting for the returning strikers.

Job growth was strongest in healthcare, which added 44,000 positions; construction grew by 26,000; and, retailers added 13,600. The professional and technical category increased by 48,000 jobs, fueled largely by increases in IT, management, accounting, and technical services. Staffing and related services added almost 24,000 jobs.

Government was the biggest loser as it has been for months, shedding 34,000 jobs in September, while manufacturing cut 13,000 positions.

The report showed little appetite in the private sector for aggressive hiring. Since April, the Labor Department pointed out, monthly job growth has averaged 72,000 positions. In the seven months prior, the average was 161,000.

“Given the complete lack of clarity as to what the economic outlook will be and the uncertainty about what’s going on in Europe and the political paralysis in Washington,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief economist at the Economic Outlook Group, “there is not much of an economic justification for employers to suddenly ramp up hiring.”

The indices included in the chart accompanying this post all point to tepid improvement. The Monster Employment Index is up over last year, but only by 7 percent. And it has barely budged since April.

According to the Labor Department, there are 14 million Americans out of work. A year ago, 14.7 million were out of work. Another 9.3 million are underemployed, working part-time jobs because they can’t find other work. That was a jump of 450,000 since August. A year ago in September, there were 9.5 million underemployed workers.

In addition, 2.5 million are out of work and want a job, but didn’t fit the criteria to be counted as officially unemployed. That number is virtually unchanged since September 2010.

Said John Challenger, CEO of the global outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, “The alternative measure of unemployment, which takes into account people who have stopped looking for work, but still want a job, as well as those working part-time because full-time work is unavailable, increased to 16.5 percent. That figure has been on the rise from a recent low of 15.8 percent in May. ”

Even the 4-cent-an-hour increase in average hourly payrolls, better than a decrease to be sure, just covers the 4-cent hourly decrease reported for August. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.9 percent, the Labor Department reported.