Jobless rate bolts to 8.1 percent, 651K jobs lost

WASHINGTON – The nation’s unemployment rate bolted to 8.1 percent in February, the highest since late 1983, as cost-cutting employers slashed 651,000 jobs amid a deepening recession.

Both figures were worse than analysts expected and the Labor Department’s report shows America’s workers being clobbered by a wave of layoffs unlikely to ease in the coming months.

“There is no light at the end of the tunnel with these numbers,” said Nigel Gault, economist at IHS Global Insight. “Job losses were everywhere and there’s no hope for a turnaround any time soon.”

February’s net job loss came after even deeper payroll reductions in the prior two months, according to revised figures released Friday. The economy lost 681,000 jobs in December and another 655,000 in January.

Employers are shrinking their work forces and turning to other ways to slash costs — including trimming workers’ hours, freezing wages or cutting pay — because the recession has eaten into their sales and profits. Customers at home and abroad are cutting back as other countries cope with their own economic problems.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 4.4 million jobs, more than half of which occurred in the past four months.

With employers showing no appetite to hire, the unemployment jumped half a percentage point from 7.6 percent in January. That was the highest since December 1983, when the jobless rate was 8.3 percent.

All told, the number of unemployed people climbed to 12.5 million. In addition, the number of people forced to work part time for “economic reasons” rose by a sharp 787,000 to 8.6 million. That’s people who would like to work full time but whose hours were cut back or were unable to find full-time work.