A flurry of payroll reports this week suggests November produced some jobs but not enough to budge the nation's unemployment needle well below 9 percent. The Federal government releases jobless stats on Friday, prompting pundits to race forward with preliminary forecasts and observations.

Among them is the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Its U.S. employer clients announced 42,474 layoffs in November. That's down just 0.7 percent from October, but down dramatically from September and down 13 percent from November 2010.

November pink slip announcements were heaviest in the government sector and made up 44 percent of all job cuts for the month. Many were the result of cuts made by the U.S. Air Force.

The Challenger report also found that job cuts are trending upward this year. So far, employers announced 564,297 job cuts in 2011, outpacing the 529,973 reported for the year 2010.

Challenger officials said military cuts were responsible for many of the layoffs and pointed to draw downs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Officials also cited the failure of the super committee charged with reducing the deficit to form a plan and said that is expected to trigger deep job cuts in the future. "The worse may be yet to come," said CEO John Challenger.

Even so, economists at Jeffries & Co. said they expect the U.S. unemployment rate to dip to 8.9 percent in November as private sector job gains outpace government job cuts. They predict 145,000 private sector job gains for the month and 15,000 layoffs from local and state governments.

Jeffries Chief Financial Economist Ward McCarthy credited small and medium businesses for elevated hiring trends.
The payroll processing giant ADP released a report Wednesday showing that its small and medium business clients added 206,000 jobs in November. The firm also revised its October number upward by 130,000 jobs.

That's good news. But stay tuned. The real proof of widespread economic vitality lies in Friday's unemployment report.