The US Hasn't Created This Many Jobs in Three Years & 8 More Friday Headlines

1) The jobs numbers are in and they are good. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says US non-farm payrolls grow by 321,000 in November, crushing expectations. Here's some perspective: it's the highest monthly gain since January 2012 and the US is on its longest significant jobs growth streak since 1995. With the holidays of course, retail leads the way with 50,000 new jobs. Time will tell how many are seasonal. Unemployment and labor force participation are both steady at 5.8% and 62.8% respectively. Now if only wages would go up too...

2) Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz wants to be the new Willy Wonka. His chocolate factory is actually a fancy coffee "roastery and tasting room" opening today in Seattle. With this upscale update, Starbucks responds to the independent coffee shop craze and critics that say Starbucks is to coffee what McDonalds is to burgers. And if roasting beans aren't your thing, Starbucks also intends to sell you booze.

3) Amazon makes diapers now? After the Kindle and the Firephone, Jeff Bezos is going for a different kind of hardware. Amazon is rolling out its own brand of "ethically sourced" diapers exclusively to Prime customers. The idea is to hook earth-conscious (read, high-income) parents to its subscription service. Nothing is more precious to a retailer than a recurring purchase from a customer you can then upsell. Other products may follow.

4) Uber raised yet another billion. $1.2 billion to be exact, which could swell to $1.8 billion, less than six months after a previous round of $1.2 billion. This values the company at more than $40 billion and proves Uber's bad boy company culture isn't such a big deal to investors. To customers? Time will tell.

5) Apple admitted to deleting music from customers' iPods without their knowledge. (Yes, now the company prefers to add music without your consent. The irony isn't lost on anyone.) Back from 2007 to 2009, if you'd downloaded a song from a store other than iTunes and tried to sync it to your iPod, you'd get an error message asking to restore factory settings. When you did that, the song disappeared from your library. You'd only know it if you'd gone looking for it. The class action suit that surfaced this information might soon collapse though: it may not have a plaintiff after all.

6) On the other side of retail, the struggle continues. Sears reported a nearly $300 million loss in the 3rd quarter and will shutter Sears and K-mart 235 stores.

7) The hits keep on coming at Sony Pictures. Documents from its massive hack last week are continuing to leak and embarrass the studio. Gawker unearthed a list of employee complaints, mostly bemoaning the company's lack of creativity and risk-taking. Silver lining: at least someone at Sony thought enough of employee feedback to gather it all.

8) Gap's big bet didn't pay off. Same-store sales were down 4% year-on-year in November, after drops of 3% and 7% percent respectively in September and October. The brand's all-in campaign suggesting customers "dress normal" and let "actions speak louder than clothes" was smart – Gap is the poster brand for normcore – but maybe too smart. Turns out normal people are like everyone: they want to be told they're special.

9) Orion redux. The launch I announced yesterday — of the spaceship that might one day take us to Mars – didn't happen yesterday. But it did happen this morning. Here it is.

9 and 3/4) You chimed in on yesterday's top headlines. The price of gas got you talking. James Robinson rejoices that "the money not being used at the pump now can go into the rest of the economy." (Maybe more job growth?) From England, Ryan Fitzpatrick brings us a little perspective (and math) on the cost of filling up: "1 litre of gasoline does cost around ￡1.20, so 1 Gallon of gasoline in England would cost ￡1.20 x 3.78 = ￡4.54," he writes. "So how would you Americans feel if gasoline did cost you $7.11 per gallon?" And Gert-Jan Van Riet is paying about 8€ a gallon in the Netherlands! (If you're curious, in Paris we're looking at about $7 a gallon. I just take the bus.)

Bob Korzeniowski aptly points out I forgot to mention that the $10.34 average hourly earnings are REAL earnings, i.e. inflation-adjusted. He's right. Really, when you're writing about people's income, only inflation-adjusted figures make sense. And Mike McKenney is skeptical on the job figures shared yesterday: "Did we add 200,000+ good paying jobs that allow people to buy homes and raise a family or was it Walmart and seasonal jobs for the holidays? Gas is down for now. Most people are catching up on bills and not spending money. If we can keep gas down for 3-5 years maybe people would start spending again." Mike – and others – I'm curious what you think of today's figures. Share in the comments below.

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