Job market takes turn for worse
Employers cut more jobs than expected in June and unemployment rate climbed for the ninth straight month, hitting 9.5%.
By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: July 2, 2009: 9:08 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The battered U.S. labor market took a step backwards last month as employers trimmed more jobs from their payrolls in June, according to a government report Thursday.
There was a net loss of 467,000 jobs in June, compared with a revised loss of 322,000 jobs in May. This was the first time in four months that the number of jobs lost rose from the prior month.
The June job losses were also far worse than the forecast of a loss of 365,000 jobs by economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
The unemployment rate rose for the ninth straight month, climbing to 9.5% from 9.4%, and hitting another 26-year high. Economists had been expecting that the unemployment rate would hit 9.6%.
Nearly 3.4 million jobs have been lost during the first half of 2009, more than the 3 million lost in all of 2008.
The job losses don't tell the full picture of the pain the labor market either. The average hourly work week fell to 33 hours from 33.1 hours in May, a record low in readings that go back to 1964. Average hourly wages were unchanged, so the shorter week shaved $1.85, or 0.3%, off of the average weekly paycheck.
Those who have been out of work for six months or more, and thus have run out of unemployment benefits, climbed to nearly 4.4 million, a record high.
The only good news reported by the Labor Department Thursday was that the number of workers filing initial jobless claims fell to 614,000 last week from 630,000 the week before. That was roughly in line with forecasts.
