. >> joining us now to discuss the report's findings in more detail is michael gapen, barclays chief u.s. economist and a managing director there. michael, welcome and good to have you with us. this was a little bit of a slowdown in job growth. but still, unemployment rates staying right where they are, earnings coming up a little bit. is there any nit to pick here? >> not really, i agree with much of the lead-in that you just had. a lot of slowing can be explained by a post-hurricane return to normal. if you look back a few months, when the large hurricanes hit the u.s., hiring virtually stopped in the month of september, and we had some catch-up to do in october and november. at above trend in terms of hiring in those two months. so some slowing and a return to normalcy was expected. i think that was part of the story. and then i think the other factor was just an outsized decline in the retail sector as you just mentioned. but that's not a new story either. online retailing has been taking an ever-greater share of that type of transaction, and we've seen a reduction in employment f