A bit of an economics brief for you from Career Journal ... There's no better time to go back to school than in slow economic times, if you can afford it of course. Just make sure you're not throwing money down the drain.

Nonfarm payrolls grew by only 112,000 jobs last month after a revised 303,000 increase in October, the Labor Department said Friday. That was well short of the 200,000 jobs economists had expected, according to a survey by Dow Jones Newswires and cnbc, and the 220,000 that traders had expected just before the report was released. The unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percentage point to a three-month low of 5.4%, as expected.

In its revision, the government said employers created 54,000 fewer jobs in September and October than previously thought. Employers added 119,000 jobs in September and 303,000 in October, down from previous estimates of 139,000 and 337,000, respectively.

Economists say the economy needs to generate at least 125,000 jobs a month just to keep up with new entrants into the work force. The average since August of 2003, when employers resumed hiring after a long slump, has been slightly above that threshold at 152,000.