Trying to make sense of jobs report

Lots of luck. The national unemployment rate rose in November to 9.8 percent from 9.6 percent the previous month, but what really surprised everybody was a paltry gain of 39,000 jobs. That's nowhere approaching the consensus forecast of 150,000 (though such forecasts have not been very reliable this year). Private companies added only 50,000 jobs and most of those came from temporary help. The only good news in the report is that October's numbers have been revised to a gain of 172,000 jobs instead of the 151,000 jobs previously reported. September also was revised upward. Here's an early take from NYT columnist Dave Leonhardt:

What's causing this? No one knows, to be honest. But the most likely suspect is the same one that has been hurting the economy for much of this year. Financial crises do terrible damage, and the economic aftershocks from them tend to last longer and be worse than people initially expect.

Here's the BLS release. More later.