09 Jan December job toll: 524,000; unemployment rate now 7.2 percent
Washington, D.C. – The U.S. economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, closing out the worst year for job losses since World War II, the Labor Department said Friday.
Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost in 2008, with 1.9 million destroyed in just the past four months, according to a survey of work places. It’s the biggest job loss in any calendar year since 1945, when 2.75 million jobs were lost as the wartime economy was demobilized.
The 1.5 million jobs lost in the fourth quarter were the most in any three-month period since 1945.
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