MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US unemployment in Oct. 6.5%; peak since 1994 and climbing

Unemployment in the United States during October rose to 6.5%, totalling 10 million jobless and the highest rate since March 1994, according to the latest release from the US Labour Department.

Job losses in October reached 240.000, which add up to 1.2 million in the ten first months of 2008. US President George W Bush said the figures reflected "the difficult challenges confronting our economy". "We are in the midst of a global financial crisis, and tight credit markets have made it harder for businesses to borrow the money they need to meet their payrolls, grow, and create new jobs," he said. "The Federal government has taken aggressive and decisive measures to address this situation" but he admitted that it would take time for the stimulus measures to have their full impact on the economy. But it's going to get worse before it begins to improve. US automakers Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., and Chrysler are struggling to survive and are expected to announce more job cuts before long as sales plummet. The government also said job losses were worse than first reported for the preceding two months, 284,000 rather than 159,000 in September and 127,000 rather than 73,000 in August. Many economists believe the unemployment rate will climb to 8 or 8.5% by the end of next year before slowly drifting downward. Some think unemployment could even hit 10 or 11%, if an auto company should fail. Compared to the 1980-1982 recession, considered the worst since the Great Depression in terms of unemployment, the jobless rate rose as high as 10.8% in late 1982 just as the recession ended, before inching down. Factories, including auto makers, construction companies, especially home builders, retailers, mortgage bankers, securities firms, hotels and motels and educational services, all cut jobs. So did temporary help firms, which is a barometer of future hiring. All those losses more than swamped the few gains elsewhere, including in the government, health care and in accounting and bookkeeping.