WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economy added 204,000 jobs in October, double Wall Street’s forecast, despite a government shutdown that was expected to put a damper on hiring.

Hiring for September and August was revised up by a combined 60,000 jobs, the Labor Department said Friday. The revised gains along with the big increase in hiring in October suggested the economy might have more strength than previously thought.

Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected an increase of 100,000 jobs in October. In recent action, U.S. stock markets rose, after investors decided that the strong employment report probably won’t spur the Federal Reserve to taper its bond-purchase program much sooner than expected.

Most economists expect the Fed to scale back its stimulus in early 2014, though the latest increased in jobs raises the odds of the bank moving in December.

“We believe that this report is significant enough to increase the probability of a December taper to around 35% if November’s economic data show a continuation of this trend,” predicted Doug Handler, chief U.S. economist of IHS Global Insight.

Job seekers meet with recruiters during a job fair hosted by the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky in October. Bloomberg

The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.3% from 7.2% in what was likely a residue of the government shutdown. Federal workers were classified as unemployed under the government’s method for calculating the unemployment rate. Indeed, the number of people who said they were temporarily laid off soared by 448,000 in October, an unusually large increase that probably will revert back to normal in November.

The shutdown also contributed to a 720,000 decline in the size of the labor force, which tugged the participation rate down to 62.8% from 63.2%. That’s the fewest percentage of able-bodied people 16 or older looking for work since March 1978.

The largest slice of hiring in October took place at retailers, bars, restaurants and hotels — lower-paying establishments that tend to boost hiring temporarily for the holiday season. Those industries added a combined 97,000 jobs.

Yet almost every industry aside from government added workers, the Labor Department reported. Manufacturers added 19,000 positions in a reflection of rising demand for heavy-duty products. Professional and technical jobs rose by 21,000 and the steadily growing health-care sector hired 15,000 people as the nation prepares for the launch of President Obama’s health-care law.

“U.S. businesses largely shrugged off the government shutdown and ramped up hiring in October, suggesting more underlying strength in the U.S. economy than we thought,” said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Government was one of the few losers. The number of federal jobs fell by 12,000, cutting government employment by 94,000 over the past year.

Still, the surprising increase in overall jobs raises questions about whether the shutdown distorted the government’s normal process of collecting data. Read: How believable is the jobs report?

Labor officials said the response rate to its establishment survey used to determine the number of jobs created was higher than normal because they had more time to collect responses. That could mean the preliminary number is more accurate than usual and won’t change as much when the report undergoes further revisions in the next two months.

WSJ analysis: October jobs report

A more telling sign that the economy is showing greater resilience than most economists believed were the revisions for September and August. The number of new jobs created in September was raised to 163,000 from 148,000, while August’s figure was increased to 238,000 from 193,000.

The job gains in October and August were the second and third strongest performances of the year. Over the past three months, the U.S. has added an average of 202,000 jobs, the best stretch of hiring since the end of 2012 and early 2013.

More hiring, however, hasn’t translated into much faster wage growth, probably since the bulk of new jobs have been created in lower-wage industries. Average hourly wages edged up 2 cents to $24.10, putting the year-over-year increase at 2.2%. That’s just slightly faster than the rate of inflation.

The average workweek was unchanged at 34.4 hours.