>Jobs are only up 100K or so. Xmas is almost here. There is always
>additional hiring near xmas. Does this seasonal hiring not count as
>part of the statistics?
That's what seasonal adjustment is for. If retail hiring is normal, it would appear more or less unchanged. If it were stronger than normal, it'd appear as a gain (after adjustment). If weaker, it'd appear as a decline. And the reverse is true in January - normal layoffs = unchanged. Less than normal layoffs = gain. Etc. With the BLS's new concurrent seasonal adjustment technique (which does that adjustment "on the fly," rather than with pre-announced seasonal adjustment factors), it should be able to deal with less than normal hiring in November => less than normal layoffs in January.
Doug