News In Brief
| Washington
Seasonal hiring prompts drop in jobless rate, to 7.2%
Unemployment dropped to 7.2 percent of the civilian labor force in November, the Labor Department said Friday. Most of the improvement came from Christmas-season hiring in retail trade and service industries. The report showed 8,154,000 unemployed, a drop of 277,000 since October. Total employment was 107,571,000.