Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in November, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.2%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment trended up in health care, leisure and hospitality, government, and social assistance. Retail trade lost jobs.

Both the unemployment rate, at 4.2%, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.1 million, changed little in November. These measures are higher than a year earlier, when the jobless rate was 3.7%, and the number of unemployed people was 6.3 million.