"October now clearly stands as an outlier, partly thanks to the hurricane effect and partly, we think, to plain old sampling error," wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, a liberal research group in Washington, said the overall pace of hiring still appeared steady.
"With limited job growth and falling real wages, heavily indebted consumers will have difficulty maintaining a healthy pace of consumption growth," Baker said.
David Kelly, chief economist at Putnam Investments, said consumers, who have been the driving force of growth for the last four years, are pushing themselves to the limit.
Kelly estimated that the personal savings rate this year would drop to 0.8 percent, the lowest level since 1933.
"It's all pointing to an economy that is slumbering down to third gear. It's a mature expansion, but I think it's self-sustaining," Kelly said.
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