I'm a little confused about the December employment situation

My little statistical model of payroll employment, based on initial claims and ISM manufacturing and non-manufacturing employment indexes, says that payroll employment will grow by about 130,000 in December. The ADP employment survey, on the other hand, says private sector employment grew by 297,000. ADP has consistently underestimated private sector employment by about 50,000 this year, government employment has consistently fallen by a few tens of thousands per month. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that payroll employment in December rose by somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000.

In judging the strength of the employment numbers, keep this in mind. At the pre-recession peak in December 2007 (hey, happy three-year anniversary!) payroll employment was 137.951 million. In November 2010 it was 130.539 million, so we're down 7.4 million jobs from the peak. However, population growth over the last three years means we needed an extra 4.68 million or so just to keep pace, so the actual shortfall in jobs now is about 12 million. We need 130,000 or so jobs per month to keep pace with population growth going forward; anything in excess of 130,000 jobs lets us eat into the 12 million job shortfall. So if employment growth is 300,000 per month (which is way above current forecasts), it will take us just over 70 months - that's almost 6 years - to get back to normal. We're in a very deep hole.