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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (663812)	12/3/2004 9:38:03 PM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

November Job Growth Unexpectedly Weak December 03, 2004 6:25:00 PM ET By Glenn Somerville WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy created only 112,000 new jobs in November, the government said on Friday, about a third of October's total and weak enough to deepen a shadow of uncertainty hanging over the holiday sales season. The November figure from the Labor Department, the weakest job creation since July, is likely to aggravate consumer worries about job security and rising energy costs, which already have sales off to a soggy start. The job total was well under forecasts for 180,000 new hires last month, though the unemployment rate eased to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent in October. Separately, a report from the New York-based Institute for Supply Management pointed to further growth in the nation's service sector but also underlined caution about hiring. In a further sign the labor market is improving only slowly, the Labor Department lowered its estimates for job growth in both September and October. October's gain was marked down to 303,000 from an originally reported 337,000-job increase. The department cut September's total to 119,000 from 139,000. Still, several analysts noted that, on average, job growth over the past three months was approaching the 200,000 mark, consistent with continued growth even if the monthly pattern is uneven. ``Presumably, once we get past the October-November volatility, other labor market indicators are suggesting to us that payroll gains should accelerate as we move into 2005,'' said economist Parul Jain of Nomura Securities in New York. The November number did nothing to change widespread expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for a fifth time this year in mid-December. In a Reuters poll of big bond trading firms, all 20 so-called primary dealers surveyed expect U.S. central bank policy-makers to raise the federal funds rate another quarter percentage point to 2.25 percent at their meeting on Dec. 14.