Employers in US cut 533,000 jobs

Bloomberg

Payrolls shrank by 533,000 workers last month, the biggest loss since December 1974, after decreasing a revised 320,000 the prior month, the Labor Department said Friday in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 6.7 percent, the highest level since 1993.

Job losses are likely to keep cascading into next year as the collapse in credit and slump in spending hurt companies from General Motors to Citigroup and AT&T.

"The labor market capsized in November. Layoffs are accelerating as businesses are aggressively cutting costs,'' Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said. "The financial panic has hammered the economy and we are seeing a very broad-based decline in payrolls."

Friday’s report also reflected the housing slump and the worst credit crisis in seven decades. Payrolls at builders dropped 82,000 after decreasing 64,000. Financial firms decreased payrolls by 32,000, after a loss of 31,000 jobs the prior month.Service industries, which include banks, insurance companies, restaurants and retailers, cut 370,000 workers after declining 153,000 in the previous month. Professional and business services eliminated 136,000 jobs.