The economy in the United States added 171,000 net new jobs in October according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, higher than many economists had expected. Even better, more people were added to the payroll in August and September than the BLS had originally expected. With the economy improving by some measures and companies hiring in various sectors, more long-term unemployed people who had fallen out of the unemployment stats restarted their job searches and therefore the unemployment rate ticked up one-tenth of a point to 7.9 per cent. Ignoring the ongoing layoffs among local, state, and federal governments, the latest jobs report from the BLS (PDF) , which is based on data gathered before Hurricane Sandy hit the Mid-Altantic states and made it impossible for millions of people to get to work even if they wanted to. Ignoring government jobs and jobs on farms, which have their own cycles due to planting and harvest that the BLS has always measured separately, the private sector added 184,000 jobs in October, and thus government has chopped another 13,000 employees. The good news is that the BLS now believes that non-farm payrolls rose in the United States by 192,000 in August, which is 50,000 jobs more than originally believed, and were up 148,000 in September, a bit higher than the 114,000 projected in the BLS report a month ago. That means job gains the first 10 months of 2012 have averaged 157,000 per month in 2012, which is