from the NY Times:
The American economy lost 263,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the government reported on Friday, dimming the prospect of any meaningful job growth by the end of the year.
The Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of unemployment dashed hopes that the pace of job losses would continue to slow as the economy clawed its way back from a deep recession. Economists had been hoping for 175,000 monthly job losses.
from Yahoo! News
If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.
More than a half-million unemployed Americans gave up looking for work last month. Had they continued searching, the official jobless rate would have been higher.
All told, 15.1 million Americans are now out of work, the department said. And more than 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007.
