“The underlying trend in unemployment is downward, and that’s what we continued to see in the November figures,” Mr. Maki said. “Over the past year, unemployment has fallen a full percentage point and is now down 2.3 percentage points from its high in 2009.”

Many economists worry that job creation will slow markedly, however, if President Obama and Congressional Republicans cannot agree on a plan to reduce the deficit by the end of the year, leading to more than $600 billion in government spending cuts and automatic tax increases in 2013. The Congressional Budget Office, as well as many private economists, warn that this path will lead to a recession in the first half of 2013 and push unemployment back up.

While it is encouraging that businesses seem to be hiring in spite of the uncertainty in Washington, that could change quickly, said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

“If the budget impasse can’t be resolved this month, it’s likely that jobs growth will weaken early next year,” he said. “The fiscal cliff is a very dangerous game.”

Even if both sides in Washington come up with a short-term solution on the budget, as many observers expect, the pace of job growth remains well below what is needed to push wages substantially higher or to significantly reduce the broadest measure of unemployment anytime soon. Factoring in people seeking work, as well as those who want jobs but have stopped looking and those forced to take part-time jobs because full-time employment was not available, the broad unemployment gauge dipped to 14.4 percent in November from 14.6 percent in October.