That’s going to hurt.

The economy’s recovery suffered a surprise setback yesterday via chilling new evidence that jobs are becoming more scarce than anyone expected — and could remain so for another two years.

The Labor Department reported that hiring by businesses was abysmally weak during November, producing just 39,000 new jobs, sharply fewer than the 150,000 new jobs that economists had forecast based on spurts of upbeat business activity in recent months.

The economy needs at least 150,000 new jobs a month to begin to regain its health, economists say.

The weak jobs report sent the unemployment rate climbing to 9.8 percent from 9.6 percent, marking the 19th straight month of 9 percent-plus unemployment, the longest since World War II. The number of unemployed Americans rose to 15.1 million.

A year ago, at the depth of the recession, the jobless rate was 10 percent.

“Surprisingly lackluster job gains,” is how Jay Feldman, director of economics at Credit Suisse Securities, took the bad news, adding, “It’s not up to scratch.”

What’s also worrisome, he said, is that the underemployment rate held steady at 17 percent, indicating that people who’ve given up hunting for full-time work appear to have abandoned hope of finding any type of job.

One of the biggest surprises in November came in retailing, which lost 28,100 jobs just ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The dim employment picture caused investors to dump US Treasury bonds and the greenback. The dollar dove 1.1 percent against the yen and lost 1.2 percent against the euro, falling to $1.3362 from $1.3209.

Gold jumped 1.5 percent here to $1,409.90 an ounce.

Wall Street traders shrug ged off the job weakness, finding optimism for higher profits in shrinking pay roll costs and higher productivity in both manufacturing and serv ice businesses.

Indeed, a report yes terday from the Institute of Supply Management said service business ac tivity rose to a six- month high in November, and that forward- contracts for services stood at a seven-month high in No vember.

“This suggests that the soft patch is behind us and economic activity is picking up into year-end, ” said Jill Brown, vice presi dent of economics at Credit Suisse Securities.

Some analysts predict a strong close for stocks in 2010.

For the year to date, the Nasdaq is up 14.20 percent, while the S&P is 9.83 per cent higher, and the Dow is up 9.15 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 19.68 to 11,382.09, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 added 3.18 to 1,224.71 The Nasdaq rose 12.11 to 2,591.46.

Some market watchers said the payroll weakness helps to justify the Federal Reserve’s recent controversial moves to boost the economy by purchasing $600 billion in Treasury bonds through June. In fact, in an interview for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Fed chief Ben Bernanke wouldn’t rule out expanding the program.