NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The surprising jump in retail sales last month pointed to a rebound in consumer spending as the holiday shopping season began, but analysts warned that the fourth quarter could be sluggish overall as consumers keep a nervous eye on the job market.

The Commerce Department said retail sales surged in November, beating Wall Street forecasts, and the department even revised October's sales to flat from its initial report that sales fell.

Sales were tolerably good, even excluding a jump in volatile automobile sales, inspiring some economists to upgrade their outlook for consumer spending in the fourth quarter.

"October and November ... sales each registered substantial gains (excluding autos), pointing to a reasonable fourth-quarter consumer spending figure when all is said and done," said Sherry Cooper, chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns.

But "reasonable" is still not the "blistering" pace of the third quarter, when consumer spending -- which fuels more than two-thirds of the nation's economy -- exploded at a 6.4 percent annual rate, pushing economic growth up 8.2 percent, the fastest pace in nearly 20 years.

That spending frenzy, driven by tax rebate checks and cash from a mortgage refinancing boom, was expected to dissipate in the fourth quarter, and early reports from retailers have shown respectable, if not terrific, holiday sales. Thursday's numbers did little to change that view, some economists said.

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"These data suggest real consumption rose about 0.7 percent in November; the fourth quarter as a whole is heading for perhaps a bit less than 2 percent" growth, said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics Ltd.

A 2 percent growth rate in consumer spending would actually be slower than the 2.2 percent growth rate in the fourth quarter a year ago, when worries about an impending war with Iraq kept businesses from hiring, which helped keep consumers cautious.

A year later, however, the economy is clearly recovering. Businesses are spending money to restock inventories -- which grew in October, a separate report said Thursday, but not as fast as sales -- and buy new production equipment. Meanwhile, consumer confidence has rebounded.

The job market, however, has been much slower to respond. Though employers outside the farm sector have added to their payrolls for four straight months, they haven't exactly been gobbling up unemployed people.

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Average monthly job growth of about 80,000 is roughly half of what's needed to keep pace with the growth in the labor force, wage and salary growth has slowed to a crawl, and the average duration of unemployment last month hit 20.1 weeks, the highest level since January 1984.

"That's five months of sitting on your rear end unemployed, and that doesn't bode well for spending," said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research.

Still, some economists say that thousands of self-employed people and workers at startup firms are not being counted by the Labor Department's payroll survey, making the job market look worse than it really is. This army of new workers may be the reason for the steady decline in the unemployment rate, which is compiled by a separate survey of households and has been much more upbeat in recent months.

Meanwhile, economists said that even though new jobless claims rose last week, the trend has been down in recent months.

"It's not a barn-burner of a job market, but it should be good enough to keep the consumer hanging in there," said David Kelly, senior economist at Putnam Investments, who noted that consumer spending has not actually declined in more than a dozen years. "That winning streak is unaffected by all these numbers."

Still, after carrying the economy through a stock-market crash, terror attacks, two wars and more, consumers may be getting tired. That means businesses will need to boost spending and start hiring more, if the economy's growth is to stay robust. If employment slows, then consumer spending may take a hit, too.

"I'm not at all convinced this recovery we're having is going to be as smooth as we've had in previous recoveries," said Yamarone of Argus Research.