WASHINGTON, Dec 3 - A surprisingly soft 112,000 new U.S. jobs were created in November, the Labor Department said on Friday, casting a shadow across an already downbeat holiday sales season with consumers apparently worried by scarce work and high oil prices.
The November figure -- the weakest since July -- came in well below Wall Street economists' forecasts for 180,000 new jobs, though the unemployment rate eased to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent in October.
In addition, Labor 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.
Some of the weaker performance reflected a trailing off of construction activity in Southeastern states after four hurricanes swept through the region in the fall. Only 11,000 construction jobs were added last month, compared with 65,000 in October. October's construction gain was the strongest since March 2000.
Manufacturing employment posted a third successive monthly drop in November, losing 5,000 jobs after what had appeared to be the beginning of a recovery in the hard-hit sector earlier this year.