. >> reporter: pittsburgh's dan stillwell, one of 147 million americans counted as employed last month i work around 50 hours a week. >> reporter: alex stipula is another. >> i work about 40 hours a week, just about. >> reporter: economist justin wolfers says the employment picture for workers across the country was brighter than reported in october, for at least two reasons. >> the labor market looks pretty good. now, the headlines don't look quite so sunny. they say 214,000 jobs were created this month, which is less than created in the last few months. but once you dig into the details, you start to see the difference. >> reporter: what details? >> the first is the government actually runs two surveys, the employer survey gets all the attention. it probably should. it's a better survey. but the household survey actually said it was a monstrously good month in october. it said 650,000 jobs are created. it surely wasn't that good. so we should discount it but we shouldn't throw it away altogether. >> reporter: and the second point? >> this was the first estimate of what happened in oc