The self-employed could be factored in, but it isn't an easy number to nail down. (Hey, I've been self-employed for years. Sometimes the goose hangs high, and sometimes the goose flies low.)

Apparently, the number of self-employed went up by 156,000, almost three times (!) the 57,000 non-farm workers that were added.

If you throw in the self-employed who got work, the number of new jobs last month goes up to 213,000.

We need to watch what happens after the holiday season. I have heard that a lot of retail outfits around here have chosen to ramp up their payrolls in time for the holidays, and plan to keep them on. Don't know if that applies to a lot of other businesses. We also need to keep an eye on revised numbers. In recent reports, numbers for earlier months have been revised drastically upward. I don't know why this is so.

This article is informative, and helps explain why the employment picture is a complicated one.