Private payrolls increased by 147,000 last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reports. That represents a considerably slower rate of growth from October’s revised 189,000 jump, but today’s number beat expectations by a comfortable margin. The consensus forecast compiled by Briefing.com, for instance, projected a lesser gain of 120,000. Meanwhile, the jobless rate reportedly fell to 7.7%. I don’t pay much attention to this number—payrolls data is more informative for business cycle analysis. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to notice that unemployment slipped to the lowest level in nearly four years. There’s a lot of debate about the relevance of the unemployment numbers, but to the extent that this data tells us anything it’s the direction of the trend, and for now that seems to be moving in a productive direction: down.