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The U.S. economy added a disappointingly small number of payroll jobs last month as the unemployment rate dipped to 5.9 percent, but the 57,000 gain in jobs was the fourth consecutive monthly increase and other details of today's report from the Labor Department indicated broad if slow improvement in the nation's labor market.

Many analysts had expected a payroll job rise of 150,000 or more. However, manufacturing firms shed another 17,000 jobs, the 40th monthly drop in a row, and a combined strike and lockout at grocery stores in California cut between 25,000 and 30,000 workers from payrolls, the department said.

During the past four months, payrolls have increased by 328,000, although they still remain 2.35 million below their level when the recession began in early 2001. "The payroll increase was somewhat less than expected, but when one looks at the gain in hours worked, the rise in the share of industries adding jobs and the drop in the unemployment rate, the November employment report is certainly not a disappointment," said economist Ray Stone of Stone & McCarthy, a financial markets research firm.

The small payroll increase aside, workers with jobs were putting in more hours. The length of the average private work week rose by 6 minutes, to 33.9 hours, for the second month in a row. In manufacturing, the work week rose by 12 minutes to 40.8 hours and the amount of overtime was up as well.

Meanwhile, the share of private industries adding jobs last month rose to 54.7 percent, which analysts said was evidence of the broadly based nature of the labor market gains. All the payroll figures are obtained from a survey of about 400,000 business and government workplaces.

Another sign of improvement came from the monthly survey of 60,000 households on which the unemployment rate is based.

From a peak of 6.4 percent in June, the jobless rate has declined by half a percentage point, as a total of 865,000 additional people have found jobs. During that five-month period, the number of unemployed workers has fallen to 8.67 million from 9.36 million.

However, during the same span, the size of the labor force has grown by 181,000, much less than normal population growth would suggest. As a result, the share of the population 16 and older that either has a job or is seeking one has dropped from 66.6 percent to 66.3 percent.

"Both surveys show continued growth in job creation," said Labor Secretary Elaine Chao in an interview. "The last four months have been the best in the past three years."

"There is something very fundamental happening in the economy right now," Chao said. "All this period we are going through is laying the foundation for greater job growth in the future."

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