The job market seems to be getting better, and it is doing so in surprising areas. Jobs seem to be going to people with less education, and the number of long-term unemployed is coming down.

Over all, the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in November from 9 percent a month earlier.

That rate comes from a survey of households, which is subject to sampling error. During the summer, when jobs data looked poor and talk of a new recession grew, it was much weaker than the other survey, of employers. But this fall it has been much stronger. Over long periods, those reports tend to come together, so perhaps the household numbers will not look as good as they do now.

Or maybe it will simply turn out that the jobs report — which is based on a survey of employers — has been too pessimistic.

Over the last three months, the job survey has averaged gains of 143,000 per month, while the household survey has gained 318,000 per month. Moreover, the job survey has been regularly revised upward. August went from zero — a number that seemed terrifying at the time — to a decent 104,000. The September gain was 103,000 when it was first reported; now the figure is 210,000. October was 80,000 when first reported; now it is 100,000 with one more revision to come.

These are signs of a generally strengthening labor market.

Within the household survey, there are some very encouraging things:

The unemployment rate is falling among workers with less education. The rate for high school dropouts is now 13.2 percent, down from 15 percent a few months ago. The rate for high school graduates is 8.8 percent, down from a recent high of 10 percent. The rate for those with some college, but not a bachelor’s degree, is now 7.6 percent, down from 8.4 percent a couple of months ago.

But the rate for college grads is holding steady at 4.4 percent. It was a little lower earlier this year.

The number of long-term unemployed workers is starting to fall, while the proportion of the unemployed who quit their last job — rather than losing it — seems to be rising. There are now 5.7 million people who say they have been out of work for more than six months, a million fewer that at the peak in early 2010. The number of unemployed workers who say they lost their last job is 7.5 million, the lowest number in nearly three years and down 2.5 million from the peak.

This is not to say those figures are good. The peak level of long-term unemployment had never been as high as three million before the last recession began. The unemployment rate for high school dropouts is double what it was in the summer of 2007. But at least the figures are getting better.

An economy where more jobs are going to those with lesser education who have been out of work for a long time would be a wonderful thing. There is no guarantee that the trends will continue, or that some of the improvement does not come from sampling error. But the new jobs report jibes with the Conference Board consumer confidence report for November, which showed that the people it surveyed were less negative than they had been, both about the current jobs market and about the prospects for improvement.

If recent American economic data was all the information we had, people would be much more optimistic. As it is, there are many who reacted to the job numbers as Micheal Darda of MKM Partners did this morning:

While the economic data have been better of late, we remain concerned that we are seeing a bounce back from a series of supply shocks earlier in the year that may not be sustained against the foliage of tighter financial conditions, a deep recession in Europe and a sharp slowdown in China and emerging-market countries.

The world may indeed fall apart. But for now at least, this one part of it seems to be getting better.