Unemployment Rate Skyrockets to 6.5%; 240,000 Jobs Lost in Oct

The Labor Department provided sobering news Friday for anyone looking to find a silver lining in the current state of economic affairs: the United States is currently hemorrhaging jobs.

Labor said that the economy lost 240,000 jobs in October, sending the unemployment rate to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, up from September’s rate of 6.1 percent. Economists had steeled for very bad news; MarketWatch’s survey of economists showed an expected job loss figure of 210,000 and an unemployment rate of 6.3 percent.

But it wasn’t October’s bad numbers that cut the deepest. The Labor Department sharply revised job loss totals for the previous two months in its report Friday. In September, 284,000 jobs were lost – compared to the 159,000 initially reported – and in August, 127,000 jobs went away, up from initial estimates of 73,000.

So far in 2008, 1.2 million jobs have been lost, with job losses reported by Labor in every month.

Labor also said that an alternative measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged job seekers not counted in the official rate and those that have had work hours cut back against their will, rose to 11.8 percent in October, from 11 percent in September. Many economists consider this measure to be the “true” unemployment rate.