“Unemployment is expected to remain above 8 percent for the next four years.” That gloomy assessment of the U.S. economy from FedEx Chief Economist Gene Huang is echoed in any number of reports and economic predictions.

“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.”

Surprising economists and putting an upbeat end to 2011, the U.S. unemployment rate declined to 8.5 percent in December while the economy added 200,000 new non-farm jobs.

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.

At the end of December, Recruit Co. Ltd. announced that it had acquired the U.S. and European operations of Advantage Resourcing for $410 million. This deal will result in Advantage Resourcing divesting most of its non-Japanese operations.

Recruit conducts comprehensive staffing services and information services and has been operating a U.S. staffing business through The CSI Companies, Inc., a U.S. provider of staffing solutions that it acquired in July 2010. The company also acquired Staffmark in October. Staffmark ranked as the 14th-largest U.S. staffing firm, and the deal with Recruit gave it an enterprise value of $295 million. Advantage Resourcing ranks 11th on Staffing Industry Analysts’ 2011 list of largest global staffing firms.

According to a press release from Recruit,

Because certain achievements have been attained in managing CSI, we decided to expand our staffing services operations in the U.S. and in October 2011 acquired the shares of Staffmark Holdings, Inc., which has more than 300 offices in 30 U.S. states.In order to further accelerate and expand this effort, we are pleased to acquire ARA which operates 239 offices in 34 states in the U.S. and ARE which operates 22 offices in Europe and additional offices in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. By combining our staffing services knowhow in Japan and the U.S. with the Global operational expertise and client base of ARA and ARE, we aim to provide global services spanning 5 continents including North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Leveraging our success in Japan, we will provide a broader range of client services and employment opportunities to help create an affluent society and provide each and every person a vigorous life. We will deliver services to “meet your opportunity” tailored to each person around the world.

Formerly called Radia Holdings Inc., Advantage Resourcing changed its name in early 2010 and divided into four groups: Advantage xPO, Advantage Technical Resourcing, Advantage Professional and Advantage Staffing. Among Advantage’s Japan brands are technical staffing providers Ctec, Technopro, CSI, Science, N&C, and Technopro-China. Advantage will keep its operations in Japan and will be part of the holding company Prompt Holdings. Its Advantage Federal operations, which provide staffing, including security-cleared personnel, to firms serving the U.S. government, will remain in the U.S. In Japan, Charles Abadie, Advantage chairman and CEO, will continue overseeing the operations under Prompt Holdings.

“This transaction provides great value for our investors, clients and employees and the culture, growth and success of Advantage International was a good match for Recruit,” Abadie said.

With this deal, Recruit will get the U.S. and European businesses of Advantage Resourcing as well as operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and Dubai. According to StaffingIndustry.com, the business lines posted revenue of approximately $1.4 billion in their fiscal year ended June 30, 2011. The lines also included 250 locations along with 22,000 employees at more than 6,000 clients.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Monster Worldwide Inc. (MWW) is being removed from the S&P 500 after losing almost $5 billion in market value in the last five years. With a stock price low enough to force the world’s largest online-recruiting company out of the S&P 500, there’s some very public speculation that the global employment advertising company could be bought by a private equity fund. According to the Bloomberg article, the company has plunged 66 percent this year, the most in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as American businesses remained reluctant to hire.

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 more than a 92 percent premium over Friday’s closing price of $7.71. “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.

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 unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent in November, the lowest it has been since March 2009, as the U.S. economy added 120,000 jobs.

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.

Payroll and HR services firm ADP spread around a little holiday cheer yesterday when the company said 206,000 new jobs were added to private payrolls 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 tomorrow morning. Before yesterday’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 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.

Bravo is airing a one-hour special tonight that may do for executive headhunting what Simon Cowell did for talent shows.

In the space of 60 minutes (commercials included), Wendy Doulton dispenses such bits of advice to her six-figure job candidates as “You need to lose the cleavage,” and “You make me feel like taking a nap.”

Born in the U.S., educated in London, Doulton’s blunt, unvarnished advice is delivered, in a clipped British accent. “A résumé should be like a skirt,” she declares. “Long enough to cover the basics, but short enough to keep them interested.”

Doulton’s delivery may be all Cowell, and her bedside manner runs more to Gregory House than Marcus Welby, but she gets results. She manages the boutique headhunting firm she founded in Hollywood, Katalyst Career Group, after stints as head of talent acquisition at Yahoo Media Group and at DreamWorksSKG.

Her client list includes all the big names; Fox, Google, Amazon, Discovery, VEOH Networks, and Grey Advertising, are just a sample.

The aptly named show, “The Headhuntress,” includes what amounts to a makeover of two job seekers. One prattles on about astrology. The other admits to having appeared in porn films. Doulton turns them into candidates you would be proud to present.

Whether the show will become a Bravo series isn’t clear. Maybe it depends on how well the “interview” goes, something we could find out by monitoring #headhuntress on Twitter. Doulton will be taking questions and feedback during the broadcast tonight at that hashtag. Follow the show at @theheadhuntress.

She’ll also join Jessica Miller-Merrell of “Blogging4Jobs” at #JobHuntChat at 10 p.m. ET tonight to answer job-seeker questions.

The unemployment rate nudged down, but new jobs in October fell short of what economists expected, according to numbers released this morning by the U.S. Department of Labor.

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 non-farm 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.

The OnRec and Kennedy conferences, operated jointly as “The Recruiting Conference,” which just ended today in Chicago, have been acquired by an investment group led by two brothers who previously owned Kennedy Information.

Greenhaven Partners bought the annual conference and RecruitingTrends.com, the online successor to the venerable Kennedy Information print newsletter of the same name. The price was not disclosed.

The conference and the website were owned by Tarsus Group, a publicly held U.K.-based international business-to-business media and conference firm. Tarsus bought OnRec several years ago, just as it was beginning to hold its first North American conference. OnRec was founded in the United Kingdom, and has a strong presence there with its website, print magazine, and conferences. OnRec’s UK assets were not part of the sale.

If this was just another story of consolidation in the HR space, it could end here. But even in the sometimes strange world of M & A, it’s a curious kind of coming home tale.

It begins and ends with RD Whitney and brothers Marshall and Wayne Cooper.

Even before them, there was Jim Kennedy. He founded a publishing business focused on recruiting and staffing. It’s Red Book directory of recruiters and staffing firms became an industry staple. Over time, Kennedy added newsletters for the search industry and consultants and some smaller directories.

In 1996, he sold the business for $2 million to the Coopers. With Whitney managing part of the operation, the Coopers expanded its product line and broadened its reach to include online. By 2000, with Kennedy Information’s income at a reported $10 million, the brothers sold it to the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. The sales price was $47.7 million.

Whitney stayed on with Kennedy to run the operation for BNA.

By 2009, with a full blown recession underway, BNA sold the Kennedy conference business and its online recruiting new site, RecruitingTrends.com, to Tarsus. The selling price, according to one report, was $1. However, BNA retained other parts of the business, including its recruiter directories and career and consulting services.

Whitney, a BNA vice president and Kennedy general manager, went to work for Tarsus, running the Kennedy business.

Not long after the sale, BNA put the subsidiary that owned the rest of the Kennedy Information business into bankruptcy. That resulted in realigning the operation.

Still following this story? It’s not as complicated as it might seem. Consider that the one constant through the various changes of ownership is RD Whitney. At least until January of this year, when he left to go back to work for the Coopers as a partner at Greenhaven. That’s right, the Greenhaven that just bought back the Kennedy / OnRec conference and RecruitingTrends.com.

And now that The Recruiting Conference and Recruiting Trends are back with the Coopers, Whitney said he will again manage the operation. Anna Brekka, who was senior director and managing editor of RecruitingTrends when it was owned by BNA and then by Tarsus, is also continuing.

Whitney said the firm intends to maintain some of the international and global flavor of The Recruiting Conference, even as it reorients more toward North America. He says there will be pre- and post-conference workshops that will be international in nature, and that Greenhaven will explore synergies with some of its other publications and conferences, most likely its Chief Executive Group.

“We’ll still have a relationship with Tarsus,” he said, adding that he hopes to foster relationships as well with other recruiting conferences and publishers.

More private sector jobs than expected were created in the U.S. last month. However, it was barely enough to ward off the doomsayers predicting a double-dip recession.

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 yesterday 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 tomorrow. 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.